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THE  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN 
PROTESTANT 


The  Faith  of  a 
Modern  Protestant 


BY 


WILHELM   BOUSSET 

PROFESSOR  IN  THE   UNIVERSITY  OF   GOTTINGEN 

AUTHOR  OF   "what  IS  RELIGION?" 


TRANSLATED  BY  F.  B.  LOW 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1909 


fi£(^£rtAl 


Copyright,  1909,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

Published  January,  1909 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


INTRODUCTION 3 


CHAPTER 

I.    THE  QUESTION  STATED 5 


THE  ANSWER  OF  FAITH 

II.      THE  FOUNDATION  *.  ALMIGHTY  GOD 20 

III.  GOD  AND  THE  SOUL 29 

DEDUCTIONS  FROM  OUR  FAITH 

IV.  PROVIDENCE  AND  PRAYER 51 

V.   GOD  AND  THE  GOOD 66 

THE  SUMMIT 

VI.     REDEMPTION  AND  FORGIVENESS  OF  SINS       ...        87 


VIL     ETERNAL  HOPE 107 

V  (vi  blank) 


180683 


THE  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN 
PROTESTANT 


THE  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN 
PROTESTANT 

INTRODUCTION 

TN  every  religion  belief  in  God,  or  to  express 
it  from  a  more  universal  point  of  view,  be- 
lief in  the  gods,  in  the  Godhead,  is  the  central 
idea.  Where  this  is  not  so,  as  in  the  exceptional 
case  of  the  earliest  form  of  Buddhism^  v^e  have 
to  deal  with  an  attenuated  religion,  permeated 
with  a  philosophic  conception  of  the  world. 

Our  object  in  this  little  book  is  to  try  to 
define,  by  comparison,  the  peculiar  position 
and  the  characteristic  qualities  of  our  belief — 
that  is  to  say,  of  the  Christian  belief  in  God 
— so  far  as  it  concerns  the  religious  life  of  man- 
kind, and  thus  to  comprehend  the  essential 
character  of  the  Christian  religion.  At  the 
same  time  we  must  put  the  question  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  Christian  belief  in  God.  In  the 
history  of  Christianity  we  are  confronted  with 
an  ^normous  variety  of  forms,  and  among  the 
ever-varying  phenomena  we  must  seek  to  dis- 

3 


4    FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

cover  the  permanent  and  the  essential.  We  do 
this  by  directing  our  glance  backwards  to  the 
creative  starting  point  of  this  religion,  to  the 
life  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  also  by  studying 
the  innumerable  forms  and  expressions  through 
which  that  seed  reached  its  development,  as 
well  as  the  long  list  of  heroes  of  the  Christian 
faith.  But  we  cannot  avoid  putting  our  own 
subjectivity  into  this  stream  of  living  events 
and  asking  the  question.  Wherein  lies  the  power 
of  the  Christian  belief  in  God,  which  works  on 
us,  or  can  and  must  work  on  us  ?  Yet  we  ask 
the  question  in  such  a  way  that  we  do  not  re- 
gard our  subjectivity  as  sovereign  and  alone 
decisive.  We  are  prepared  in  the  plenitude  of 
historical  experience  constantly  to  correct  our 
own  point  of  view,  voluntarily,  without  any  ex- 
ternal compulsion  laid  upon  us  by  authority. 

All  religious  life,  however,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  is  linked  to  definite,  personal 
needs,  difficulties  and  problems  which  touch 
most  deeply  our  inmost  being,  our  individual 
ego.  Faith  frees  us  from  these  difficulties,  and 
gives  an  answer  to  the  problems  of  life.  Thus 
it  is  with  the  Christian  faith  in  God.  We  listen 
both  to  the  anxious  questioning  which  arises 
from  our  souls,  and  to  the  answer  which  our 
faith  in  God  gives  us. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  QUESTION   STATED 

"IX  rE  human  beings  find  ourselves  with  our 
^  ^  whole  life  and  being  a  part  of  an  uni- 
versal existence,  and  we  ask  ourselves  concern- 
ing our  relation  to  this  existence,  and  the  mean- 
ing of  our  life  in  it.  We  put  that  existence  on 
the  one  hand  and  our  life  on  the  other.  And 
the  first  feeling  that  comes  to  us — especially 
to  us  modern  men — is  the  tremendous  feeling 
of  our  own  insignificance,  powerlessness,  and 
dwarf-like  nature.  The  men  of  the  ancient 
world  could  banish  this  feeling.  Secure  and 
firm,  the  earth  rested  at  their  feet,  in  the  centre 
of  the  universe,  surrounded  by  the  constellations. 
Over  it  rose  the  brazen  arch  of  heaven,  and 
above,  not  too  far  oflT,  dwelt  the  gods,  the  God- 
head. The  man  of  the  ancient  world  could 
still  feel  himself  lord  on  the  globe,  and  so  could 
think  of  defying  the  gods  and  laughing  at  them. 
And  when  death  approached  him,  he  saw 
children  and  grandchildren — a  long  series  of 
generations  who  should  rule  the  earth  even  as 

5 


6    FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

he  had  done.  To  the  most  earnest  and  profound 
minds  of  ancient  days  life  offered,  indeed,  rid- 
dles which  could  not  be  banished.  But  still 
the  former  frame  of  mind  was  always  possible 
and  attainable.  How  different  it  is  with  us 
children  of  a  modern  day  when  we  consider 
ourselves  and  our  lives,  if  only  for  a  moment! 
For  to  us  the  world  has  grown  immeasur- 
ably greater.  According  to  our  perception  our 
earth  has  been  removed  from  the  centre  of  the 
universe,  and  now  revolves  as  an  atom  round 
the  sun,  and  the  latter  again  revolves  round  a 
distant,  unknown  centre,  and  with  all  its  starry 
host  occupies  but  a  remote  corner  in  the  uni- 
verse. And  those  bodies  which  we  call  the 
friendly  stars,  which  illumine  the  heavens,  are, 
in  truth,  fiery  volcanoes,  so  immense  and  so 
terrifying  that  no  human  imagination  can  picture 
them.  But  we,  ourselves,  are  placed  between 
two  infinities  in  time  and  space — ^the  infinity  of 
the  macrocosmos  and  the  microcosmos.  And 
if  astronomy  with  telescope  and  spy-glass  leads 
us  into  the  world  of  the  macrocosmos  and  shows 
to  our  amazed  imagination  suns  after  suns, 
systems  after  systems  of  fixed  stars  and  central 
suns,  and  reveals  in  nebulous  spots,  scarcely 
visible  to  the  eye,  unknown  worlds  whose  rela- 
tions of  time  and  space  bewilder  us,  on  the  other 


THE  QUESTION  STATED  7 

hand,  biology,  with  its  microscope  and  artificial 
breeding  of  bacteria,  introduces  us  into  the 
world  of  the  microcosmos  and  teaches  us  the 
wonderful  delicacies  of  organic  Hfe.  Whether 
we  cast  our  thoughts  upward  into  the  world  of 
the  mysteriously  great,  or  downwards  into  the 
world  of  the  wonderfully  small,  we  are  always 
overcome  with  the  feeling  of  looking  into  an 
abyss  which  turns  us  dizzy.  Our  perceptions 
and  conceptions,  our  beliefs  and  our  hypotheses 
— by  the  help  of  which  we  seek  to  understand 
the  world  rightly — all  our  ideas  of  space  and 
time,  of  cause  and  effect,  of  atoms  and  moleculae 
of  aether  and  aether  vibrations,  of  cells  and  seeds, 
contain,  each  of  them,  a  whole  series  of  new 
questions.  We,  shadows  of  a  day,  are  destined, 
it  would  appear,  to  contemplate  the  universe 
only  from  that  side  of  it  which  is,  by  chance, 
turned  towards  us,  and  we  are  incapable  of  any 
real  survey  of  the  whole. 

But  within  the  limits  of  the  infinitely  great, 
and  the  infinitely  little  what  a  rich  source  of 
mysterious,  inscrutable  life  in  all  its  wealth; 
what  a  rushing,  mighty  stream  of  events !  We 
believe  that  we  have  investigated  to  a  great 
extent  the  laws  of  these  occurrences,  and 
understand  some  of  them;  for,  truly,  the  hu- 
man understanding  has  penetrated  very  far  in 


8    FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

its  bold  spirit  of  daring.  It  has  shown  from 
what  elements  the  starry  worlds  are  built;  it 
has  penetrated  the  laws  of  the  tiniest  living 
organisms;  it  has  succeeded  in  deciphering  to 
some  extent,  at  least,  the  history  of  organic  life 
through  the  stages  of  its  development  on  our 
earth.  Yet,  even  supposing  we  had  entirely 
completed  this  work,  supposing  we  possessed 
all  knowledge  and  knew  all  the  laws  of  nature, 
we  should  still  be  confronted  by  a  great  and  im- 
penetrable problem,  the  problem  of  life  itself, 
the  problem  of  the  concrete  and  individual 
actuality  of  this  world — that  this  world  is  such 
as  it  is.  We  believe  that  we  have  discovered  all 
the  laws  according  to  which  bodies  move  and 
revolve  in  a  system;  but  why  there  are  just 
these  bodies  of  this  size,  at  this  distance,  revolv- 
ing at  this  velocity,  and  arranged  in  these 
definite  systems,  we  do  not  know.  In  all  our 
knowledge  there  remains  a  final  something 
that  is  impenetrable;  we  are  therefore  obliged 
to  lift  our  thoughts  to  the  infinite,  and  to  derive 
the  finite  from  the  infinite.  And  supposing  we 
knew,  absolutely,  all  the  elements,  all  the 
foundation  stones  from  which  our  world  was 
constructed,  and  knew  all  their  qualities  and 
powers,  yet  we  should  still  be  face  to  face  with 
this  insoluble  problem — ^Why  are  they  precisely 


THE  QUESTION  STATED  9 

these  elements  and  these  attributes  ?  And  sup- 
posing we  succeeded  in  expressing  the  charac- 
teristics of  the  elements  in  a  definite  arithmetical 
scheme  according  to  the  weight,  number,  and 
order  of  the  atoms  and  moleculae,  there  would 
still  remain  the  question  of  why  it  was  just  this 
scheme  and  no  other.  And  if  our  scientists  suc- 
ceeded in  arranging  all  the  organisms  and 
living  things  of  the  earth  genealogically,  in  a 
gigantic  table,  and  in  understanding  their  ori- 
gin according  to  historic  evolution,  there  would 
yet  remain  as  impenetrable  the  concrete  exist- 
ence of  this  tree  of  life  which  began  with  the 
simplest  cell  formations  and  ended  with  man. 
Modern  biologists  are  especially  interested  in 
the  fact  that  every  form  of  organic  life,  every 
plant,  even  though  it  is  in  conformity  with  the 
law  of  its  development,  has  something  peculiar, 
individual,  incalculable,  in  it.  And  it  is  this 
same  riddle  that  confronts  us  everywhere,  that 
meets  us  in  human  life,  only  with  far  greater 
potency  and  distinctness.  Every  human  indi- 
vidual life,  however  much  may  be  known  about 
its  being  in  conformity  with  law  and  evolution, 
has  yet  at  bottom  something  inexplicable, 
unique,  never  to  be  repeated  in  exactly  the 
same  form,  absolutely  impenetrable. 
Thus  all  existence  moves  along  according  to 


10  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

definite  laws  which  we  can  understand.  But 
the  fact  that  we  exist  here  and  in  this  particular 
form  ever  remains  inscrutable  and  eternally 
mysterious;  it  cannot  be  explained  according 
to  reason.  It  is,  somehow  or  other,  appointed 
by  some  power;  this  enigmatical  existence 
which  surrounds  us  has  emerged  from  unat- 
tainable depths,  from  an  unbounded,  incalcu- 
lable Will. 

And  what  are  we  in  the  midst  of  this  mys- 
terious reality,  with  our  life  and  our  struggles  ? 
What  is  our  meaning,  our  object  in  life  I  Are 
we  merely  sparks  which  fly  upwards  out  of  the 
dark  night,  and  pass  away  again  into  the  dark- 
ness ?  And  even  if  we  link  our  existence  to 
that  of  the  community,  the  nation,  humanity, 
and  try  to  be  content  with  the  contribution  of 
our  life's  work  to  the  common  stock  of  the 
human  race,  yet  we  ask  ourselves.  What  is  the 
meaning  and  object  of  mankind  in  the  mass .? 
Do  we  really  march  upwards  and  onwards  in 
our  work  ?  Now  and  again  the  clouds  appear 
to  lighten  and  we  perceive  something  in  the 
course  of  events  that  looks  like  an  universal 
plan;  but  again  the  heavens  are  overcast  and 
deep  mysteries  surround  us.  Tremendous  ob- 
stacles to  a  definite  plan;  the  wholesale  squan- 
dering of  powers;    senseless,  harsh,  destructive 


THE  QUESTION  STATED  n 

events,  and  the  powerful  intervention  of  the 
elemental  forces  of  the  world  are  apparent  on 
all  sides.  Is  it,  indeed,  progress  or  retrogression, 
or  from  one  point  of  view  advance,  from  another 
descent,  and  on  the  whole  an  aimless  oscilla- 
tion ?  The  strife  between  the  optimists  and  the 
pessimists  is  waged  unceasingly,  and  the  more 
profound  and  thoughtful  natures  appear  to 
ally  themselves  with  the  hosts  of  the  latter. 

Let  us,  for  the  moment,  pass  once  more  from 
the  objective  world  to  our  own  selves.  Oh,  if 
only  we  might  lead,  within  the  narrow  limits  af 
our  possibilities,  a  life  filled  with  a  purpose!  If 
only  we  could  consistently  shape  our  lives  as 
the  sculptor  casts  his  clay,  with  a  firm  hand! 
But  how  unskilfully  as  a  rule  we  conduct  our 
lives!  When  we  glance  back  over  our  life  do  we 
not  recognize  our  lost  opportunities  and  the 
mistakes  which  can  never  be  made  good  ?  And 
how  cruelly  did  the  rough  reality  of  the  world 
around  us  force  its  claims  upon  us!  Did  not 
many  among  us  sally  forth  to  find  something 
truly  great  to  conquer,  something  truly  good, 
and  how  miserable  was  the  thing  that  we  actu- 
ally found!  The  stream  of  life  carried  us  to 
quite  a  different  place  on  the  banks,  far  below 
the  spot  where  we  thought  to  land.  Thus  we 
stand  in  the  midst  of  a  great,  dismal  universe. 


12  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

between  two  infinities,  in  the  midst  of  a  mani- 
fold life  (which  ascends  from  unknown  depths) 
and  all  its  problems;  we  dwell  on  the  boundary 
line  of  day  and  night,  between  birth  and  death. 

"...  We  are  such  stuff 
As  dreams  are  made  on;  and  our  little  life 
Is  roimded  with  a  sleep." 

And  now  an  anxious  question  arises  within 
us:  Is  there  a  final  meaning  and  abiding  place 
in  our  Hfe  ?|  Is  our  own  existence  anchored  in 
the  depth  of  reality,  or  are  we  drifting  about 
on  the  surface  of  life,  like  the  foam  which  the 
waves  of  the  ocean  toss  up  ?  Are  we  only  like 
falling,  fading  leaves  which  after  a  brief  sum- 
mer pass  away  from  the  living  world  to  prepare 
the  earth  below  for  an  eternal  continuation  of 
the  aimless  game  ? 

We  cannot  help  asking  ourselves  these  ques- 
tions, and  longing  for  something  beyond  the 
unsatisfying  conclusions  to  which  we  are  led 
by  a  consideration  of  the  world  around  us.  This 
longing  is  not  a  mere  idle  wish  or  desire  arising 
from  our  feeling  of  powerlessness  and  insig- 
nificance and  futility;  we  are  forced  to  it  by  an 
inward  compulsion,  by  the  feeling  of  our  rela- 
tive greatness,  of  our  inward  spiritual  superiority 


THE  QUESTION  STATED  13 

to  all  the  classified  and  isolated  phenomena  of 
existence,  and  we  feel  that  we  are  more  than  all 
the  things  around  us  which  we  include  in  the 
term  nature^  that  our  true  self  is  never  quite 
satisfied,  but  ever  stretches  forth  beyond  this 
finite  and  imperfect  existence  to  something  that 
is  final  and  absolute.  And  the  greatness  of  the 
encompassing  universe  which  crushes  and  op- 
presses us,  which  seems  to  deny  all  our  claims 
to  superiority,  where  is  it  and  how  does  it  come 
to  us  ?  It  exists  in  our  own  mind,  we  conceive 
it;  where  there  is  no  ego  it  does  not  exist.  It  is, 
so  to  say,  the  human  spirit  which  creates  and 
overcomes  this  profound,  awe-inspiring  reality. 
In  this  insignificant,  contemptible  human  nature 
of  ours  dwells  a  will  which  is  able  to  oppose  all 
outward  resistance  and  to  pursue  its  path  in 
spite  of  it — a  will  that  may  be  crushed  yet  is 
never  entirely  destroyed,  and  is  never  wholly 
inert  when  it  is  a  question  of  what  we  call  the 
good  and  the  true.  We  cannot  put  on  one  side 
"these  obstinate  questionings,"  they  are  an  in- 
trinsic part  of  our  life.  Very  varied,  indeed,  is 
the  form  of  these  questions  as  asked  by  the  indi- 
vidual, and  manifold  are  the  sources  from  which 
an  answer  is  sought.  Some  try  to  shelve  them. 
These  are  the  inoffensive,  easy-going  people. 
They  have  cast  a  cursory  glance  at  the  riddle  of 


14  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

life,  but  this  frightened  them,  and  they  turned 
away;  they  seek  to  forget  it,  and  to  spend 
themselves  in  frivoHty  and  amusement  and  the 
gay  dance  of  life.  And  they  spend  themselves 
in  the  most  disastrous  sense  of  the  word;  they 
deny  their  true  self,  do  violence  to  themselves, 
and  lose  their  true  nature  in  the  encompassing 
reality  which  drags  them  hither  and  thither 
because  they  have  lost  their  centre.  It  need  not 
be  absorption  in  the  coarse  and  hollow  pleasures 
of  daily  life;  it  may,  indeed,  be  absorption  in 
what  is  called  work,  in  manifold  activities  which 
seem  so  full  of  purpose  but  are  really  without 
meaning  or  value,  in  the  eager  grubbing  for 
earthworms,  in  the  amassing  of  useless  treas- 
ures. Such  people  have,  indeed,  only  trifled 
with  the  business  of  life.  Because  they  were 
not  courageous  enough  to  descend  into  the 
darkness  and  the  depths  of  existence,  and  to 
tend  the  roots  of  life,  they  allowed  them  to 
wither,  and  so  they  lead  an  aimless  life,  a  prey 
to  all  the  chance  currents  of  the  moment,  with- 
out an  object  or  a  support. 

Opposed  to  these  stands  another  set  of 
human  beings.  They  perceive  all  the  harsh- 
ness and  the  terror  of  the  world  around  them; 
they  long  for  truth  and  reality,  for  a  complete, 
perfect   life,    for  "deep,  deep   eternity."     But 


THE  QUESTION  STATED  15 

they  shut  themselves  off  from  the  one  thing 
which  can  lead  them  farther  in  this  world — 
that  is,  from  the  crushing,  overwhelming  feeling 
of  their  own  nothingness.  They  refuse  to  see 
the  chains  by  which  they  are  bound,  and  they 
believe  in  the  almighty  power  of  their  own  ego 
raised  to  a  superhuman  degree.  Dwelling  in 
the  presence  of  death  and  amid  the  unsolved 
riddles  of  the  universe,  they  yet  raise  the  trium- 
phant song  of  life,  and  think  to  find  the  mean- 
ing of  life  in  this  existence  which  their  own  en- 
raptured enthusiasm  has  enriched  and  height- 
ened in  value.  And  yet  how  deeply  they  are  to 
be  pitied!  Their  fate  forces  them  continually 
to  climb  beyond  their  strength,  and  to  raise 
their  voices  louder  and  louder  until  they  only 
utter  discordant  notes.  Solitary  they  pursue 
their  course,  like  the  brilliant  meteor  which, 
outside  the  laws  of  nature,  explodes  in  brilliant 
flashes  and  leaves  behind  in  the  world  a  dark- 
ness greater  than  ever. 

And,  further,  we  come  to  a  third  group: 
they  are  too  earnest  and  too  thoughtful  to  pass 
by  the  riddle  of  life,  too  wise  and  yet  too  cau- 
tious to  squander  their  powers  uselessly.  But 
to  them,  too,  is  denied  the  gift  of  freeing  them- 
selves from  their  own  ego  and  surrendering 
themselves  to   a   higher   power.     They   mask 


i6  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

themselves  in  the  armor  of  irony  and  scepticism 
of  their  own  forging;  they  penetrate  deeply  into 
the  problems  of  life,  but  their  hypercritical  in- 
tellect prevents  them  from  yielding  to  any  deeper 
feeling,  their  sophistical  reasonings  make  them 
think  that  perhaps,  after  all,  there  is  nothing 
serious  and  important  in  life,  perhaps  everything 
is  only  the  confused  sport  of  their  heated  imag- 
ination. We  must  not,  they  seem  to  say,  look 
at  things  from  such  a  one-sided,  serious  point  of 
view;  we  must  repress  our  feelings!  As  they 
stand  for  pure  intellect  and  keen  observation, 
they  regard  the  material  world  as  a  varied,  de- 
lightful drama,  a  bubble  whose  brightly-colored 
glories  we  admire,  well  knowing  that  it  soon 
bursts.  They  feel  deeply  unhappy  and  envy 
the  simple  people  to  whom  life  is  real  and  no 
dream,  and  yet  they  think  themselves  far  su- 
perior to  the  older  children  and  fools  of  the  day 
at  whom  they  ironically  smile.  And  to  a  cer- 
tain extent  they  enjoy  the  varied  play  of  their 
own  ego.  They  are  voluntary  wanderers  in  the 
desert  who  lead  a  life  of  dehberate  barrenness. 

Above  these  stands  another  group  which  we 
will  now  consider — those  who  have  accepted 
life  with  resignation.  They  have  given  up,  once 
for  all,  the  idea  of  a  solution  to  a  problem  of 
which  they  are  perfectly  conscious.     For  them 


THE  QUESTION  STATED  17 

the  universe,  in  its  ultimate  meaning,  is  some- 
thing like  a  machine  which  pursues  its  majestic 
course  from  the  unknown  Whence  to  the  un- 
known Whither;  which  acts  in  complete  accord- 
ance with  law  and  purpose,  and  is  absolutely 
indifferent  to  all  individual  life,  even  of  the  high- 
est kind.  They  themselves  have  learnt  to  acqui- 
esce. This  modern  feeling  is  more  in  accord- 
ance with  truth  than  that  of  the  Stoics,  who 
declared,  often  with  exaggerated  and  false  elo- 
quence, that  this  indifferent  attitude  towards 
the  universe  and  its  laws  constituted  the  indi- 
vidual's highest  happiness.  We  no  longer 
maintain  that  we  reach  the  highest  happiness 
by  this  path;  we  admit,  calmly  and  with  resig- 
nation, that  this  actual  life  can  never  completely 
satisfy  our  needs,  and  that  there  is  neither  per- 
fect satisfaction  nor  final  meaning  in  life.  It  is 
simply  a  matter  of  making  the  best  that  is  pos- 
sible out  of  this  life,  and  of  living  in  friendliness 
and  in  sympathy  with  all  mortal  beings,  and  of 
diffusing  around  us  in  this  dark  and  cold  world 
a  little  warmth,  a  little  sympathy,  a  little  help, 
and  a  little  love. 

One  last  group  of  men  remains — those  who 
exercise  the  greatest  attraction  over  our  contem- 
poraries. These  are  they  who  preach  the  gospel 
of  beauty.    They  say:  Whatever  life  may  be  in 


i8  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

its  final  meaning,  whether  the  universe  around 
is  horribly  cruel  and  harsh,  purposeless  and  un- 
meaning, all  the  same  we  delight  in  this  horrible 
life,  for  it  is  beautiful,  it  is  sublime.  All  its  rid- 
dles and  confusions  only  enhance  its  wonders 
and  its  sublime  flights;  everything  that  is  ugly 
and  evil  and  wrong  is  only  the  necessary  shadow 
against  which  light  and  beauty  stand  out  all  the 
more  clearly.  They  look  upon  the  great  con- 
trasts that  exist  in  life  as  a  delightful  iridescence. 
And  out  of  all  the  diff^erent  tones  of  existence, 
from  the  dull  notes  of  the  depths  and  the  clear 
sounds  of  the  heights,  from  the  full  notes  and 
the  shrill  notes,  from  the  chords  and  the  dis- 
cords, there  rushes  towards  them  a  glorious 
harmony.  They  throw  over  the  dark  clouds  of 
reality  the  rainbow  of  beauty,  they  delight  in 
the  colored  reflection,  they  listen  to  the  delicate 
tones.  The  subtle  vibrations  and  feelings  which 
are  revealed  in  their  own  souls  seem  to  them 
more  important  than  the  rough  matter-of-fact 
things  of  life  which  only  interest  commonplace 
minds.  They  declare  that  illusion  is  the  final 
reality,  and  a  dream  the  highest  truth;  they 
confuse  night  with  day,  and  plunge  with  the 
greatest  delight  into  the  unreal  and  the  incom- 
prehensible. They  can,  indeed,  address  life  thus 
in  heroic  fashion :  Strike  us  with  many  strokes. 


THE  QUESTION  STATED  19 

kill  us,  yet  will  we  love  thee,  for  thou  art  beau- 
tiful, thou  art  sublime. 

But  journeying  along  their  own  road,  and 
apart  from  all  those  who  seek  in  different  ways 
to  discover  a  solution  of  the  riddle  of  life  are 
they  who  have  found  the  answer  of  Faith. 

We  will  hearken  to  the  answer. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  ANSWER  OF  FAITH 

THE  foundation:  almighty  god 

^  I  ^O  believe,  to  be  religious,  implies  that  we 
adopt  a  definite  attitude  towards  the  uni- 
verse around  us,  one  absolutely  diflPerent  from 
the  uncertain  views  that  have  already  been 
mentioned.  The  man  who  really  believes  pene- 
trates, verily,  to  life's  deepest  foundations,  and 
does  not  pass  them  by  with  indifference.  He 
does  not  put  himself  in  Titanic  opposition  to 
the  world,  nor  does  he  indulge  in  weary  scepti- 
cism and  passive  resignation.  Neither,  again, 
does  he  seek  to  delude  himself  over  the  problems 
of  Hfe  by  the  illusion  of  the  Beautiful.  He  ac- 
cepts the  universe  courageously  and  reverently. 
He  believes  that  it  is  a  part  of  an  intelligent 
unity,  and  he  finds  in  it,  behind  it,  and  beyond 
it,  an  absolute  something  which  gives  a  final 
support  to  his  life.  Even  more  than  this,  faith 
teaches  us  that  we  are  related  to  the  profound- 
est  reality  of  existence  in  the  very  depth  of  our 


THE  FOUNDATION  21 

being;  that  we  may  gain  courage  and  find  our 
soul's  peace  in  it,  and  that  we  are  permitted  to 
call  it  "Our  God."  All  belief  which  in  the  long 
course  of  history  has  led  mankind  onwards,  in 
so  far  as  it  was  really  true  and  living,  has  striven 
toward  this  goal,  often  by  many  by-paths  and 
circuitous  ways,  and  through  the  lands  of 
shadows  and  of  darkness.  That  of  which  the 
religions  of  all  ages  and  nations  had  but  a  glim- 
mering, which  sounds  clearly  and  unmistakably 
in  the  announcement  of  Christ's  gospel,  fore- 
shadowed by  the  Old  Testament  prophets,  is 
the  fact  that  the  power  revealed  to  us  mysteri- 
ously in  the  world  around  us  is  our  God. 

The  phrase  our  God  has  a  twofold  meaning. 
He  is  on  the  one  hand  our  God,  who  speaks  to 
us  out  of  the  plenitude  of  existence,  whose 
creatures  we  are,  and  before  whose  wonderful 
and  almighty  reality  we  are  conscious  of  our 
own  insignificance.  On  the  other  hand.  He  is 
our  God  to  whom  we  belong,  whom  we  are 
permitted  to  address  as  ThoUy  who  draws  us  to 
Him,  and  to  whom  we  venture  to  draw  near  in 
a  perfect  confidence  which  bridges  over  all  dis- 
tance between  God  and  His  creatures.  In  both 
these  respects  the  Christian  belief  in  God  is 
simply  the  clearest  expression  of  ideas  which 
have  painfully  struggled  to  embody  themselves 


22    FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

in  the  long  history  of  religions.  Throughout  the 
ages  the  religious  life  of  the  nations  has  oscil- 
lated between  two  poles:  on  the  one  hand,  a 
feeling,  often  amounting  to  frenzied  anguish,  of 
the  remoteness  of  the  Divine  Being;  on  the  other 
hand,  a  sense  of  His  nearness,  which  has  some- 
times cast  respect  and  reverence  behind  it.  Now 
the  one  idea  was  more  prominent,  now  the 
other;  danger  and  narrowness  were  to  be  en- 
countered on  both  sides.  In  the  Christian  re- 
ligion, however,  both  ideas  are  equally  promi- 
nent; the  noble  and  lofty  edifice  rests  on  two 
pillars  of  equal  strength. 

God  is  our  God:  He  is  more  than  we  are,  and 
different  from  us.  This  conception  of  God  is 
clearly  seen,  even  in  the  lowest  stages  of  re- 
ligious life.  The  thought  of  the  Godhead  fills 
men  with  feelings  of  fear,  flight,  and  defence, 
with  wild  anguish  which  is  capable  of  the  most 
terrible  sacrifices.  In  the  old  Greek  religion 
we  have  the  acknowledgment  that  "the  gods  are 
mightier  than  men,"  and  the  human  presumption 
which  put  itself  on  an  equality  with  the  God- 
head was  regarded  as  the  cardinal  sin.  The 
spiritual  import  of  the  old  Greek  tragedy  was 
summed  up  in  this  thought:  The  gods  crush 
the  pride  of  men.  And  how  strongly  the  heroes 
of  the  Old  Testament  emphasized  this  side  of 


THE  FOUNDATION  23 

their  belief!  He  is  the  God  who  rages  in  the 
tempest  and  in  the  darkness  of  the  clouds 
and  then  vanishes;  the  terrible,  mysterious  God, 
who  has  determined  on  the  annihilation  of  His 
people,  whose  day  is  darkness  and  corruption, 
whose  message  a  burden  which  overwhelms  the 
soul,  whose  being  is  shrouded  in  mystery,  whose 
ways  are  higher  than  our  ways,  and  whose 
thoughts  are  above  our  thoughts.  An  entire 
book  of  the  Old  Testament  is  devoted  to  the 
mysterious,  inexplicable  God.  Every  line  of 
the  Book  of  Job  strikes  this  note.  It  is  true  that 
in  the  New  Testament,  in  the  preaching  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  opposite  note  is  sounded, 
that  of  the  glad  tidings  of  the  ever-present  God 
who  is  close  to  us.  Yet  the  dominant  note  still 
sounds  in  unimpaired  strength,  and  gives  to 
Jesus's  message  its  keynote  and  its  power. 
The  Father  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  also  the 
Lord  of  Heaven  and  of  Earth,  the  wonderful 
and  inconceivably  strong  God,  who  permits  the 
sun  to  shine  on  the  good  and  the  evil,  and  the 
rain  to  fall  on  the  just  and  the  unjust.  He  is 
the  mysterious  and  terrible  God  who  cast  the 
shadow  of  night  and  of  darkness  over  His  Elect 
One's  life,  and  permitted  it  to  end  on  the  cross. 
The  greatest  disciple  of  the  Master  proclaimed 
the  same  God :   the  source  and  goal  of  our  life 


24  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

and  being,  the  God  who  reveals  Himself  in  mys- 
tery, who  destroys  mankind's  ideas  of  wisdom 
and  might  with  the  folly  and  shame  of  the  cross, 
in  whose  inscrutable  will  exist  salvation  and 
damnation,  and  in  whose  hands  we  are  as  the 
clay  in  the  hands  of  the  potter.  On  St.  Paul 
was  founded  the  piety  of  St.  Augustine,  with  its 
fervor  for  God,  so  rugged  and  so  austere,  and 
its  boldness  which  trampled  upon  the  human 
being's  own  will.  In  the  background  of  Luther's 
belief  also  there  stood  the  hidden,  mysterious 
God:  "We  must  fear  God  above  all  ^Ise." 

We  children  of  a  later  age  are,  if  we  rightly 
understand  ourselves  and  our  position,  specially 
inclined  toward  this  severe  and  gloomy  view  of 
religious  life.  For  our  faith  tells  us  that  this 
reality,  which,  incalculable  and  immeasurable, 
stretches  before  us  in  the  eternally  great  and  the 
eternally  little;  this  stream  of  life,  with  all  its 
riddles,  is  an  expression  of  His  being,  the  work 
of  His  will.  We  cannot  estimate  the  limits  of 
His  creative  power,  nor  measure  the  area  of  His 
operations.  Even  if  we  unfurled  all  the  sails  of 
our  knowledge,  and  embarked  on  the  great 
ocean  of  facts,  and  if  we  flew  on  the  wings  of 
fancy  which  carried  us  aloft  to  the  summits  of 
all  being,  we  should  not  reach  the  limits  where 
the  mystery  of  infinity  was  revealed.     On  the 


I  u  N  n 


UNfVER^ 


\^t 


£al;^h   ?.JHE  FOUNDATION  25 


contrary,  new  depths  of  existence  are  disclosed 
to  us  at  every  advance  that  we  make  in  our 
knowledge  of  the  material  world  and  its  laws. 
Every  answer  that  we  find  to  a  question  opens 
up  a  series  of  new  questions;  for  every  prob- 
lem solved  many  fresh  ones  arise.  The  farther 
we  wonderingly  penetrate,  the  clearer  it  becomes 
to  us  that  the  world,  as  we  know  it,  which  we 
consciously  govern,  is  only  an  island  in  the 
ocean,  round  which  the  unfathomable  waves  of 
Divine  life  and  creation  rise  and  surge.  It  is  not 
a  definite  unity,  a  whole;  it  is  merely  a  section, 
a  fragment,  and  behind  this  fragment,  so  far  as 
we  can  comprehend  it,  there  lies  hidden  the 
fulness  of  Divine  being  which  is  never  perfectly 
revealed  to  us.  The  higher  we  strive  upward 
and  forward  toward  Him  the  more  He  seems  to 
withdraw  from  us.  He  does  not  allow  us  to 
look  upon  Him  face  to  face,  and  even  the  pa- 
triarchs of  the  Old  Testament  pronounced  with 
foreboding  that  whosoever  looked  upon  the 
face  of  God  must  die. 

Daily  He  surrounds  us  in  this  world  of  ours 
with  mysteries  and  miracles.  We  do  not  mean 
miracles  in  the  extraordinary  sense  of  the  word 
which  a  childish  belief  assigns  to  it.  But,  as  we 
have  already  said,  this  whole,  concrete  universe 
by  which  we  are  daily  surrounded  is  in  itself  an 


26    FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

insoluble  and  marvellous  miracle.  It  is  true 
that  this  whole  universe  is  governed  by  the  in- 
violable regularity  of  law,  and  that  nothing  is 
outside  its  sphere.  But  to  believe  that  we  can 
explain  by  the  term  "law'^  life  in  its  uniqueness 
and  peculiarity  is  as  if  we  thought  we  could 
drain  the  mighty  ocean  provided  we  had  a  large 
enough  net.  Every  hour  of  real  true  life  that  we 
live  refutes  us  with  its  abundant  contents. 
Each  new  blossoming  of  an  individual  human 
life  which  is  unfolded  before  our  eyes  in  myste- 
rious quietude  from  out  the  mysterious  deep, 
which,  even  if  it  is  apparently  insignificant,  has 
something  peculiar  to  itself  which  has  never 
existed  before  and  will  never  recur,  speaks  to 
us  clearly  of  God's  world  of  miracles  in  which 
we  live. 

And  now  in  contrast  to  this  God  we  human 
beings  are  a  mere  nothing,  the  work  of  His 
creative  power,  placed  in  the  universe  by  that 
power;  creatures  who  take  everything  and  must 
take  everything  from  His  hand;  bowed  in  the 
dust  before  Him,  humiliated  in  the  feeling  of 
our  weakness  and  insignificance,  and  of  our 
powerless,  purposeless  will.  Only  to  him  who 
can  bear  with  tranquillity  the  terrible  serious- 
ness of  these  thoughts  has  the  Christian  religion 
anything  to  offer.    But  to  those  who  can  do  this 


THE  FOUNDATION  27 

it  has  even  more  and  greater  things  to  reveal. 
These  are  not  confined  to  an  overwhelming 
sense  of  our  pettiness  and  nothingness  and  to  a 
mere  feeling  of  fear.  There  are  two  words 
which  absolutely  sum  up  the  substance  of  our  be- 
lief— reverence  and  humility.  And  reverence 
includes,  indeed,  fear.  Trembling,  we  stand 
before  Almighty  God,  and  we  are  not  ashamed 
of  this  fear.  Terrible  is  the  reality  of  the  living 
God  when  He  comes  on  the  wings  of  the  storm. 
We  must  fear  God  above  all  else.  Our  faith  is 
no  weak  and  sentimental  emotion,  no  mere  elo- 
quent declamation  concerning  the  kind  God 
who  is  enthroned  above  the  stars.  He  must  be 
hard,  like  flint  and  diamonds;  yet  He  does  not 
only  inspire  anguish  and  fear.  He  inspires  rever- 
ence also.  We  may  freely  offer  to  this  all- 
powerful,  wondrous  God  honor  and  reverence. 
And  feeling  thus,  our  soul  soars  above  the  pow- 
erlessness  of  our  own  little  ego  to  a  joyous,  rev- 
erent wonder  and  an  adoration  which  delights  to 
serve;  we  are  carried  aloft  to  the  heights  of  di- 
vine being  and  divine  thoughts  of  which  we 
have  a  dim  foreshadowing. 

Humility,  the  highest  human  quality,  affirms 
by  its  self-renunciation  and  its  voluntary,  rev- 
erent self-sacrifice  the  great  and  sublime  reality 
of  God  and  our  own  insignificance.     "Whom 


28  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

have  I  in  heaven  but  Thee  ?  And  there  is  none 
upon  earth  that  I  desire  beside  Thee.  My  flesh 
and  my  heart  faileth:  but  God  is  the  strength 
of  my  heart  and  my  portion  for  ever.''  In  this 
feeling  of  humihty  we  are  equally  far  removed 
from  the  proud  and  Titanic  self-assertion  of  the 
ego  and  from  all  sad  and  inconsolable  resigna- 
tion. Whosoever  drav^s  near  to  God  in  rever- 
ence and  humility  draw^s  hidden  strength  from 
the  fountains  of  His  love.  Security,  joy,  and 
pov^er  to  gain  victory  encompass  his  being,  and 
"this  universe  has  become  for  him  a  castle  in 
which  he  can  dwell  securely." 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  ANSWER  OF  FAITH 
GOD  AND  THE  SOUL 

"^TOW    we    are    confronted    with     another 
question:    How  is  it  possible  in  our  faith 
to  purify  and  ennoble  that  sense  of  sheer  fear 
and  anguish,  that  feeling  of  the  transitoriness  of 
life,  which  comes  to  us  in  the  presence  of  God's 
almighty  being,  so  as  to  rise  to  the  feelings  of 
reverence  and  humility?    And  we  answer:   We 
can  do  this  because  our  faith  has  another  side 
to  It.    Our  faith  does  not  merely  impress  upon 
us  the  harsh  contrasts  between  the  Creator's 
almighty  power  and  the  creature's  powerless- 
ness.      With    a    great    "and    nevertheless"    it 
throws  a  bridge  from  God  to  us  and  from  us  to 
God.      "Nevertheless    I    am    continually   with 
thee:  Thou  hast  holden  my  right  hand."    Our 
faith  tells  us  that  the  Almighty  God  is  our  God; 
He  inclines  Himself  to  us,  and  we  must  rise  to 
Him.     He  belongs  to  us  and  we  to  Him,  and 
we  are  permitted  to  say  Thou  to  the  Almighty 
God. 

29 


30  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

Here  our  Christian  religion  shows,  in  its  per- 
fect expression,  a  characteristic  which  is  com- 
mon to  all  religious  life.  The  more  strange  and 
mysterious  the  higher  powers — the  gods  and  the 
Godhead — appeared  to  man,  the  stronger  in 
most  cases  was  the  feeling  of  a  longing  to  strive 
upward,  and  the  perception  of  belonging  to  God. 
And  ever  stronger  grew  the  conviction  that  the 
Godhead  desires  to  come  into  contact  with  man, 
that  He  accepts  and  offers  gifts,  that  He  listens 
to  the  supplications  and  entreaties  of  believers, 
that  He  affords  us  a  final  support  and  ultimate 
protection,  that  He  demands  from  man  the  ful- 
filment of  holy  and  inviolable  claims,  but  that 
at  the  same  time  He  gives  a  blessed  reward. 
And  the  higher  man's  life  and  faith  rose  the 
more  the  nations  and  the  generations — ^whilst 
purifying  their  religion  from  the  material  de- 
mands so  intimately  bound  up  with  it — included 
in  their  belief  in  the  Godhead  their  noblest  and 
best  ideas,  their  most  sacred  possessions  and 
talents.  Thus  on  the  one  hand  they  based  on 
the  deepest  reality  those  things  which  they  val- 
ued most,  whilst  their  thoughts  of  the  Godhead 
were  purified,  and  ennobled,  and  filled  with 
a  precious  significance. 

But  it  is  true  that  here  the  greatest  and  most 
essential   differences   in    religions    begin.      For 


GOD  AND  THE  SOUL  31 

what  things  has  not  the  race  of  man  in  the  long 
course  of  its  existence  regarded  as  of  the  great- 
est value !  And  now  the  task  is  set  us  of  defining 
the  peculiar  position  of  our  Christian  belief  in 
God  with  regard  to  the  various  forms  assumed 
by  the  idea  of  highest  value. 

Far  removed  from  the  main  stream  of  the 
religions  of  the  nations,  the  Indian  religions 
which  dominated  Eastern  Asia  have  pursued 
their  course.  The  people  of  India,  pressing 
southward  after  they  crossed  the  mountains 
and  thus  separated  from  the  main  stream  of  our 
races  which  shaped  the  world's  history,  fell,  after 
their  conquest  of  the  inferior  original  inhabitants, 
into  a  dreamy,  passive  state  of  which  history 
gives  us  no  record — a  state  due  to  the  enerva- 
ting southern  climate.  Gradually  there  stole 
over  these  people  a  loathing  of  the  practical  life 
of  the  concrete  world,  and  they  regarded  it  as 
their  worthiest  object  to  retire  from  the  varied 
life  of  the  world  and  society  into  their  own  self, 
with  its  peace,  and  solitude,  and  rest.  But  they 
connected  their  thoughts  of  God  with  this  idea, 
which  they  regarded  as  the  noblest  thing  in  life. 
The  Godhead  is  that  great  calm  and  rest  of  the 
One  life  which  lies  behind  the  phenomena  of 
this  motley  world;  and  this  apparently  real 
world  is  only  the  colored  reflection  of  life,  the 


32  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

foam  cast  up  by  the  waves  which  ebb  and  flow 
in  the  eternal  ocean  of  true  being.  When  the 
individual  withdraws  from  all  the  varied  occu- 
pations of  daily  life  which  are  so  aimless,  and, 
therefore,  of  necessity,  so  painful;  when  he  ab- 
stains from  all  definite  exercise  of  his  powers  of 
will  and  thought,  and  absorbs  himself  in  the 
universal  Being;  he  discovers  in  the  depths  of  his 
own  consciousness  the  divine,  universal,  illim- 
itable, and  indefinable  Being.  "That  is  reality, 
that  is  existence,  and  Thou  art  reality  and  life." 
Religion  (from  this  standpoint)  is  complete 
abnegation  of  the  ego;  religion  means  medita- 
tive absorption  in  the  Divine,  entire  surrender 
of  self  in  the  One  and  Universal  Being.  Thus 
there  arose  the  religion  which  may  be  described 
as  the  classical  embodiment  of  real  and  logical 
Pantheism — Brahminism,  with  Hinduism  its 
corrupt  oflTspring.  And  when  we  see  here  how 
the  one  factor  in  religious  life,  the  human  ego, 
is  put  on  one  side  and  almost  reduced  to  zero,- 
we  are  not  surprised  to  find  that  in  Buddhism, 
that  offshoot  of  the  Indian  religion,  which  later 
on,  indeed,  was  to  overshadow  a  world,  the 
other  main  factor  in  religion,  belief  in  God,  was 
likewise  lost;  and  religion  became  simply  a 
vague  longing  from  out  the  depths  of  our  neces- 
sarily painful  existence  for  eternal  annihilation. 


GOD  AND  THE  SOUL  33 

It  is  easily  to  be  understood  that,  owing  to  the 
ever  closer  contact  that  tends  to  exist  between 
nations  and  civilizations,  this  religion  of  Indian 
Pantheism  has  begun  to  exercise  an  influence 
during  the  last  century  upon  our  European  and 
American  civilization.  Now  and  again  this  be- 
lief has  been  dominant  in  the  upper  classes  of 
our  civilization,  especially  when  it  was  com- 
bined with  the  glamour  of  great  poetic  or  musi- 
cal skill.  When,  however,  we  consider  the  mat- 
ter quietly,  we  cannot  believe  that  a  religious 
conception  which  seriously  preaches  the  anni- 
hilation of  all  individual  and  social  values  would 
ever  gain  the  mastery,  or  indeed  any  consid- 
erable footing,  in  a  world  where  life  is  lived  so 
strenuously  yet  so  wholesomely,  where  human 
beings  are  for  ever  striving  upward  and  feeling 
that  they  are  destined  for  great  tasks,  convinced 
that  they  stand  at  the  beginning  of  their  work 
and  not  at  the  end.  It  may  possibly  be  that 
these  ideas  have  now  and  again  met  with  pass- 
ing success  in  periods  when  there  was  for  the 
time  being  little  activity  among  certain  nations 
and  in  particular  classes.  We  had  experience 
of  this  in  the  middle  of  the  last  century.  It  is 
quite  possible  that  owing  to  too  great  and  ex- 
hausting stress  and  strain,  which  destroy  our 
nerves,  and  a  too  violent  hurry  and  rush,  a  reac- 


34  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

tion  may  set  in  and  exhaustion  be  apparent. 
But,  generally  speaking,  we  may  say  that  this 
whole  world  of  ideas  will  remain  remote  from 
our  life  and  its  characteristics.  Even  a  prophet 
like  Tolstoy,  with  his  proclamation  of  the  worth- 
lessness  of  all  that  we  hold  dear  in  life,  is,  and 
will  ever  remain,  remote  from  us;  he  cannot 
offer  us  anything  final  and  permanent,  what- 
ever else  he  may  have  to  tell  us.  At  the  most 
his  preaching  can  only  have  significance  as  a 
corrective;  he  can  warn  us  against  over-valua- 
tion of  the  earthly  goods  which  we  procure  for 
ourselves,  but  he  is  no  leader  who  conducts  us 
to  a  new  life. 

The  adherents  of  this  kind  of  religion  and 
religious  life  will  be  chiefly  found  in  certain  cir- 
cles, by  no  means  very  small  ones,  where  people 
do  not  regard  religion  seriously,  where  they  de- 
sire and  accept  religion  as  aesthetic  enjoyment 
and  where  men  and  women  who  have  rushed 
through  life  and  exhausted  their  strength  and 
overexcited  their  nerves  turn  in  the  twilight  of 
their  days  to  these  ideas.  Such  ideas  seem  to 
offer  them  a  stimulating  and  interesting  antith- 
esis, they  delight  in  the  gay  contrast,  they 
revel  in  the  thoughts  of  the  nothingness  of  life, 
the  impulse  of  which  they  have  just  felt  in  all 
the  fibres  of  their  being.     In  the  daytime  they 


GOD  AND  THE  SOUL  35 

listen  to  the  march  of  life,  in  the  evening  to  the 
nocturne  of  its  transitoriness.  Such  people  de- 
sire to  rise  a  little  toward  the  heights,  but  they 
will  not  pledge  themselves  to  anything.  We  will 
leave  such  circles;  no  one  can  think  that  there  is 
anything  here  that  promises  good  in  the  future. 
Religion  desires  and  claims  man's  whole  being, 
and  in  truth  the  deeply  serious  Indian  reHgion 
is  far  too  good  to  be  regarded  as  a  mere  play- 
thing. 

The  progressive  Western  peoples,  the  con- 
quering nations  of  the  earth,  have  pursued  quite 
a  different  course  in  their  religious  life.  They 
did  not  seek  God  in  the  twilight,  in  a  dreamy 
dimness;  to  them  faith  was  ever  united  with  the 
things  that  they  held  of  highest  positive  value  in 
their  life,  with  everything  that  led  them  upward 
and  onward  beyond  material  existence. 

To  illustrate  this,  let  us  consider  the  highest 
types  of  Western  religion.  Zarathustra,  the 
prophet  of  the  Persian  nation  that  was  striving 
for  world  dominion,  connected  the  belief  in  his 
god  Ahura  Mazda  with  the  idea  of  human  civi- 
lization. He  dwelt  among  and  influenced  a 
people  who  were  just  about  to  emerge  from  a 
nomadic  and  barbaric  existence  into  a  civilized 
one,  and  he  gave  as  the  foundation  of  this  en- 
deavor a  belief  in  God  which  had  been  revealed 


36  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

to  him.  He  announced  to  his  people  that  it  was 
the  will  of  Ahura  Mazda  that  they  should  re- 
nounce their  nomadic  life  and  adopt  the  life  of 
civilized  society  and  its  ordinances.  He  who 
builds  houses  for  permanent  settlement,  who 
engages  in  agriculture  and  cattle-rearing,  who 
extirpates  the  dangerous  animals,  who  builds 
bridges  and  plants  trees,  who  lives  peacefully 
and  honorably  with  his  neighbor,  and  who  leads 
a  holy  war  against  the  barbarians  is  a  servant  of 
Ahura  Mazda.  Whosoever  abstains  from  so 
doing  is  a  servant  of  the  devil  and  his  evil  hosts. 
In  Greece  beUef  in  the  gods  was  united  with 
the  loftier  spiritual  life  of  a  nation,  as  was  shown 
in  the  holy  war  against  the  barbarians,  and, 
above  all,  in  the  works  of  peace.  Everything 
that  adorned  and  beautified,  established  and 
made  firm,  ennobled  and  elevated,  the  life  and 
people  of  the  Greek  city  was  done  in  the  name 
of  the  gods  and  dedicated  to  their  service.  When 
later,  owing  to  the  violence  of  the  blows  dealt 
out  by  fate,  Greek  city  life  gradually  passed 
away,  when  the  twilight  of  the  gods  descended 
on  the  noble  forms  of  the  people's  faith,  the 
wise  men — Socrates  and  Plato  and  those  who 
followed  them — rescued  what  was  essential  in 
the  Greek  religion.  The  noblest  men  in  the 
period  when  the  ancient  world  was  decaying 


GOD  AND  THE  SOUL  37 

and  passing  away  were  upheld  by  the  behef 
that  behind  this  material,  visible  world,  with  its 
difficulties,  dulness,  and  imperfection,  was  a 
higher  world  which  struggled  for  expression 
painfully  and  in  fragmentary  fashion  in  this 
lower  existence — the  world  of  the  gods,  the 
world  of  the  eternal  ideas  of  the  Good,  the  True, 
and  the  Beautiful.  Placed  in  a  world  which  they 
gave  up  all  claim  to  rule,  which  remorselessly 
pursued  its  own  way,  such  men  lifted  up  their 
eyes  longingly  to  the  higher  world,  the  lost  home 
of  their  soul. 

The  great  prophets  of  Israel  likewise  raised 
their  behef  in  the  God  of  their  fathers  far  above 
the  region  of  the  actual  national  life  in  which 
they  exercised  an  influence,  and  filled  this  belief 
with  a  new  and  higher  significance.  To  their 
conception  God  stood  before  them,  prepared  in 
mighty  anger  and  harsh  indignation  to  destroy 
the  material  existence  of  His  people,  and  before 
whose  holy  and  indomitable  will  only  one  thing 
in  the  world  stood  firm — right,  justice,  holiness. 
"He  hath  shewed  thee,  O  man,  what  is  good; 
and  what  doth  the  Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to 
do  justly,  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  hum- 
bly with  thy  God  V 

From  out  this  world,  ever  striving  upward, 
the  gospel,  in  the  person  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 


38  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

soared  aloft,  and  human  faith  reached  Its  climax 
in  a  new  creative  and  Divine  fiat.  Here,  on  the 
heights,  there  sounds  throughout  this  striving 
upward  a  new,  solemnly  joyous  and  deeply  po- 
tent note.  The  gospel  announces  a  God  who 
seeks  and  desires  above  all  else  the  individual 
human  soul.  It  unites  in  a  security  and  a  close- 
ness hitherto  unknown  belief  in  God  with  the 
importance  of  the  individual  human  life.  It  is 
the  religion  of  religious  individualism  raised  to 
its  highest  point.  A  new  world  was  here  re- 
vealed to  religious  belief.  The  Persian  religion 
of  civilization  had  quickened  but  little  the 
actual  individual  life,  and  after  the  splendid 
life  and  influence  of  its  founder  had  passed 
away  it  soon  fell  once  more  into  a  religion  of 
the  most  wearisome  observance,  in  which  the 
ceremonial  service  stifled  all  individuality.  The 
philosophic  religion  of  the  dying  classical  world 
set  a  value  indeed  on  the  individual,  but  it 
created  no  close  connection  between  him  and 
the  Godhead.  For  the  Godhead  became  an 
abstract,  bloodless  phantom;  it  was  hidden 
behind  the  lofty  ideas  of  the  Good,  the  True, 
and  the  Beautiful,  of  harmony  and  order,  and 
no  human  belief  can  live  on  the  abstract.  The 
vision  of  the  prophets  also  was  directed  toward 
the  fate  of  the  whole  people,  of  the  nation,  its 


GOD  AND  THE  SOUL  39 

fall  and  its  rise.  Only  very  softly  and  timidly 
was  the  note  of  religious  individualism  sounded 
by  the  greatest  of  them.  And  is  not  the  per- 
sonal belief  of  the  pious  psalmist  overwhelmed 
with  the  sense  of  uncertainty,  with  laments  and 
weeping  and  sighing  of  all  kinds,  with  a  defi- 
ant and  wild  thirst  for  revenge,  with  manifold 
unsolved  problems  and  unbearable  burdens  ? 
When  at  last  the  later  Jewish  belief  rose  to  the 
thought  of  a  future  life  which  should  explain 
the  problems  of  this  life,  it  sank  at  the  same 
time  into  an  impersonal,  legal,  and  ceremonial 
religion,  and  dragged  itself  listlessly  and  lan- 
guidly along  the  ground. 

But  now,  with  all  its  strength,  the  gospel 
proclamation  bursts  forth  with  "God  and  the 
soul,''  "  For  what  shall  a  man  be  profited  if  he 
shall  gain  the  whole  world,  and  forfeit  his 
life?"  As  the  new  religion  was  concentrated 
and  crystallized  in  the  person  of  an  individual 
in  such  a  way  that  in  the  religious  life  which 
was  dependent  upon  it  person  and  idea  were 
inseparably  united,  it  naturally  addressed  itself 
above  all  to  the  individual.  The  gospel  puts 
the  individual  directly  under  God's  eye  and 
God's  judgment,  and  withdraws  him  from  the 
protection  which  encompassed  him  around 
through  his  belonging  to  a  nation,  a  sect,  and 


40  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

a  religious  body.  The  gospel  addresses  itself  to 
the  individual  with  its  claims  and  promises;  it 
gives  to  the  individual  the  right  to  decide  the 
course  of  his  own  life,  and  puts  the  choice  of 
heaven  and  hell  into  his  own  hands.  And,  just 
as  in  the  words  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount, 
"but  I  say  unto  you,"  all  the  power  and  signifi- 
cance of  the  individual  in  religion  is  clearly 
shown,  so  in  every  word  the  gospel  urges  per- 
sonal decision  and  choice. 

"God  and  the  soul,"  we  have  said,  for  the 
individual  human  life  was,  indeed,  of  no  value 
in  itself,  but  was  only  of  eternal  value  in  so  far 
as  it  had  freed  itself  from  its  own  egoistic  ma- 
terial nature,  and  had  found  its  centre  in  God, 
and  the  law  of  its  being  in  His  holy  will.  Only 
those  who  are  pure  of  heart  are  to  see  God. 

The  saying,  "Whosoever  would  save  his  life 
shall  lose  it,"  which  was  originally,  perhaps, 
spoken  only  with  actual  reference  to  the  avowal 
of  faith  and  to  martyrdom,  must  be  taken  by  us 
in  the  spirit  of  the  gospel  in  a  wider  and  deeper 
sense.  It  means,  really,  that  we  must  contin- 
ually risk  our  sensually  inclined  and  mortal  life 
in  order  to  win  a  higher  and  an  eternal  one. 

It  is  in  this  sense,  then,  that  the  gospel 
speaks  of  God  and  the  individual,  personal  life. 
It  is  not  life  in  its  unconsciousness,  when  it  is 


GOD  AND  THE  SOUL  41 

absorbed  in  the  universal  nature,  or  life  which 
has  abandoned  its  actual  j)ositive  work  and  in- 
dulges in  sad  resignation  and  the  twilight  of  in- 
activity; rather  it  means  the  individual  life  in 
its  greatest  energy,  in  the  active  exercise  of  its 
highest  powers,  in  its  individuality  and  unique- 
ness willed  by  God  and  ordained  in  His  decree. 
It  is  the  individual  life,  foreordained  from  eter- 
nity and  working  toward  eternity,  for  which 
nothing  else  can  be  substituted. 

This  essential  idea  has  remained  peculiar  to 
the  Christian  belief.  At  the  very  beginning  of 
its  history  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  one 
of  the  most  wonderful  and  unique  personalities 
which  the  world  has  ever  seen — a  personality 
which  destroys  the  old  world  and  creates  a  new 
one;  so  unique,  so  individual,  that  the  question 
may  be  asked  in  all  seriousness  whether  this 
Paul  is  really  to  be  considered  as  a  disciple  of 
his  Master,  as  he  proclaimed  himself  to  be,  or 
whether  he  may  not  be  regarded  as  the  second 
founder  of  the  Christian  religion.  In  any  case, 
we  see  that  in  this  matter  we  are  considering 
there  is  a  close  connection  with  the  gospel  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth.  "We  know  that  to  them 
that  love  God  all  things  work  together  for  good, 
even  to  them  that  are  called  according  to  His 
purpose."     "If  God  is  for  us,  who  is  against 


42  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

us?"  How  clearly  and  simply,  with  what  cer- 
tainty and  triumph,  is  the  essential  idea  of  the 
new  message  developed!  When  we  read  the 
seventh  chapter  of  Romans  we  see  how  the 
new  faith  deepened  and  enlarged  the  human 
soul  and  its  consciousness.  Have  we  ever 
before  been  given  a  confession  which  is  so 
profound,  so  subtle,  and  so  unique  in  its 
psychology  ? 

We  continue  this  line  of  thought,  and  a  few 
centuries  later,  we  come  across  a  wonderful 
book  which  opens  up  new  and  unheard-of 
paths,  which  ventures  to  depict  to  the  outside 
world  the  inner  workings  of  a  human  soul,  a 
book  in  which  all  external  events  are  only  of 
value  in  so  far  as  they  affect  the  inner  life,  and 
where  everything  is  regarded  from  the  spiritual 
point  of  view.  I  refer  to  St.  Augustine's  "Con- 
fessions.'' No  other  book  throughout  the 
earliest  and  middle  ages  of  the  Church  has 
shown  so  clearly  the  uniqueness  and  peculiarity 
of  the  new  religion.  "God  and  the  soul  I  desire 
to  apprehend.  Nothing  else }  Nothing  else 
whatever."  It  was  St.  Augustine's  "Confes- 
sions" which  revealed  to  the  youthful  spirit  of 
the  new  nations  the  rich  world  of  subjectivity 
and  the  inner  spiritual  Hfe — those  new  nations 
which,  when  they  had  reached  maturity,  were 


GOD  AND  THE  SOUL  43 

to  be  the  makers  of  the  history  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  Whilst  at  the  ItaHan  Renaissance  the 
soul  of  man  broke  away  from  the  idea  of  a  Di- 
vine origin  and  won  a  new  world  by  Titanic 
striving  and  determination,  and  looked  at  itself, 
sunned  itself — alas!  but  for  a  moment — in  the 
glory  and  splendor  of  its  own  ego,  at  the  Refor- 
mation the  religious  ego  was  once  more  revealed 
in  its  divinely  derived  certainty  and  in  its 
strength  rooted  in  the  fulfilment  of  the  Divine 
will.  After  long  struggles  in  bitter  captivity, 
the  individual  human  soul  soared  to  the  free- 
dom of  the  Christian,  and  now  the  mountainous 
obstacles  which  had  so  hemmed  in  the  stream 
of  personal  religious  life  rolled  away.  But  what- 
ever is  wholesome  and  promising  in  modern 
life  is  ultimately  to  be  connected  with  the  free- 
ing of  the  religious  ego  accomplished  in  the 
Reformation,  though  it  may  be  admitted  that  it 
was  not  merely  a  question  of  the  freeing  of  the 
will  alone,  but  of  its  development.  If  we  pur- 
sue this  line  of  inquiry  into  our  own  days,  we 
see  at  the  end  of  it  the  great  philosopher  on 
whom  our  knowledge  and,  indeed,  our  life  to 
a  great  extent  rest,  who  appears  to  have  re- 
newed his  glories  in  our  own  age.  It  was  Im- 
manuel  Kant  who  taught  us  that  we  should 
seek  in  vain  for  a  final  support  for  the  Absolute 


44  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

and  the  Eternal  in  the  objective  world  of  things 
limited  by  time  and  space,  but  that  we  should 
find  this  Absolute  if  we  looked  into  the  depths 
of  our  own  soul  and  discovered  the  self-existent 
law  around  which  the  soul  revolves.  Him  we 
may  rightly  call  the  sage  of  the  Christian  age — 
the  philosopher  of  Protestantism. 

Those  spiritual  movements  which  have  so 
deeply  affected  and  influenced  the  history  of 
the  Christian  peoples,  although  they  have  re- 
mained to  a  certain  extent  apart  from  the 
main  trend  of  Christian  belief  in  God,  cannot 
but  acknowledge  the  influence  of  its  spirit 
and  stand  in  most  active  relation  to  it.  It  is 
true  that  the  Christian  religion,  like  the  Indian 
religion,  developed  the  phenomenon  of  monas- 
ticism,  and  this  monasticism  for  a  time  concen- 
trated in  itself  the  best  and  most  distinctively 
progressive  forces.  But  what  a  difference  be- 
tween Western  monasticism  and  that  of  the 
Hindu  religious  world!  In  the  latter  we  have 
a  weary  retirement  of  the  human  being  into 
himself,  and  a  dreaming  away  of  life  in  medita- 
tion and  emptiness;  in  the  latter  we  have  active 
energy  which  gained  new  and  valuable  things, 
civilized  the  young  barbarian  nations,  cultivated 
territories,  cut  down  forests,  transferred  the 
treasures  of  an  old  world  to  a  new,  and  in  the 


GOD  AND  THE  SOUL  45 

solitude  of  retirement  delighted  in  the  beauty 
of  this  natural  world. 

If  we  study  modern  European  pantheism 
(which  certainly  almost  lost  sight  of  the  value 
of  the  individual  life  in  its  strong,  one-sided 
comprehension  of  the  dominating  reality  of  the 
God-idea),  we  see  what  a  great  contrast  there  is 
between  the  miserable,  pessimistically  resigned 
Indian  pantheism  and  this  joyous,  courageous 
assertion  of  the  universe  with  its  plenitude  and 
order.  Let  us  consider  for  a  moment  the  math- 
ematical pantheism  of  Spinoza:  To  him  the  in- 
dividual is  certainly  no  more  than  a  number  or 
a  dot  in  the  vast  one  and  universal  existence. 
But  still  he  is  a  number,  a  number  that  stands 
in  a  particular  place,  and  if  it  did  not  stand  pre- 
cisely there  the  whole  world  would  fall  to  pieces. 
Thus  amazed  and  adoring,  admiring  and  lov- 
ing, the  individual  raises  his  eyes  to  the  universe 
and  its  great  and  eternally  fixed  laws — amor  dei 
intellectualis.  By  the  whole  body  of  Indian 
mystics  such  sounds  would  never  be  heard. 

The  same  thing  is  to  be  observed  in  the  so- 
called  revival  of  Spinozaism  in  German  ideal- 
ism. Here,  indeed,  spirit  and  Nature  form  one 
great  unity,  and  with  its  aesthetic  pantheism 
man  threatens  to  sink  into  a  noble  child  of 
nature.    Niebuhr  once  called  the  personages  in 


46  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

Goethe's  "  Wahlverwandtschaft"  "innocent  ani- 
mals in  a  menagerie."  But  yet  how  spiritualized 
is  this  conception  of  nature!  The  whole  uni- 
verse is  comprehended  as  a  great,  purposeful 
evolution,  as  a  power  which  develops  through 
universal  growth  to  ever  higher  forms,  and  dis- 
plays the  fulness  of  life  in  the  gradation  of 
events  which  serve  a  definite  purpose.  We  are, 
therefore,  no  longer  astonished  that  this  con- 
ception of  the  world  which  united  nature  and 
spirit,  but  laid  the  emphasis  on  the  spiritual 
aspect  of  the  world,  became  gradually  changed 
in  the  old  age  of  that  great  world  genius  Goethe 
into  theism  and  the  personal  religion  of  Chris- 
tian belief. 

Thus  the  rivulets  flow  away  from  the  main 
stream  of  the  Christian  faith,  some,  appar- 
ently, to  be  lost  in  the  sand,  some  to  return  to 
it.  But  the  principal  stream  has  ever  remained 
the  same — faith  in  the  God  of  our  life  who 
anchors  our  being  to  deepest  reality,  to  Him- 
self. Or,  if  we  look  at  it  from  the  other  side,  we 
may  say  it  is  belief  in  a  spiritual,  personal  God. 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  created  a  clear  and  illumi- 
nating symbol  for  this  faith  when  He  addressed 
God  as  "Father."  He  was  not  the  first  to  strike 
this  note;  it  was  sounded  before  in  the  Jewish 
as  well  as  in  the  Greek  world  of  religion.     But 


GOD  AND  THE  SOUL  47 

nowhere  else  do  we  get  this  belief  in  God  the 
Father  expressed  with  such  certainty  and  sim- 
plicity, with  such  strength  and  conviction,  and 
nowhere  else  is  it  so  definitely  connected  with 
the  individual  life.  This  belief  in  God  as  the 
Father  has  always  remained  the  leading  star  of 
the  Christian  faith.  To  what  heights  does  this 
belief  attain  in  St.  Paul's  epistles:  "To  us  there 
is  one  God,  the  Father,  of  whom  are  all  things, 
and  we  unto  Him.'*  With  what  certainty  is  this 
belief  shown  in  the  simplicity  with  which  all  the 
writings  of  the  New  Testament  and  those  like- 
wise of  early  Christian  days  speak  of  this  God! 
We  need  only  to  compare  this  calmness  and 
simplicity  with  the  false  and  forced  pathos  of 
later  Jewish  literature,  which  lavished  attributes 
of  all  kinds  on  God. 

It  is  true  that  there  have  always  been  times 
in  the  history  of  Christendom  when  the  strong 
personal  belief  in  God  threatened  to  disappear. 
Already  in  the  first  centuries  it  was  threatened 
with  extinction  in  the  confused  mass  of  specu- 
lations concerning  the  triune  God,  the  con- 
substantiality  of  the  Father  and  the  Son,  and 
the  two  natures  of  the  God-man.  In  Eastern 
Christendom,  indeed,  personal  belief  in  God 
has  been  partly  lost,  but  in  the  West  springs 
of  mysterious  depths  were  once  more  revealed. 


48  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

Through  all  the  abstractions  and  sophistries 
of  speculation,  through  all  the  forms  of  dogma, 
the  human  soul  struggled  toward  the  living, 
personal  God  whom  it  could  and  might  address 
as  "Thou."  "Thou  hast  made  us  unto  Thy- 
self, and  our  heart  is  restless  until  it  rests  in 
Thee."  "Oh!  for  Thy  mercies'  sake,  tell  me, 
O  Lord  my  God,  what  Thou  art  unto  me.  Say 
unto  my  soul,  *I  am  thy  salvation.'  So  speak 
that  I  may  hear."  And  these  notes  of  Augus- 
tinian  piety  are  sounded  in  spite  of  the  Papacy 
and  the  worldliness  of  the  Church  and  its  organ- 
ization, in  spite  of  scholasticism  and  the  ossifi- 
cation of  the  Christian  religion  into  a  system 
throughout  the  Middle  Ages,  until  with  the 
Reformation  and  Martin  Luther  this  mighty 
Thou  rises  once  more  to  the  living  God. 

This  acknowledgment  of  God  as  a  Father 
may  seem  specially  difficult  to  us  children  of 
to-day,  for  modern  natural  science  has  shown 
us  God's  workings  and  Being  in  an  infinity  and 
a  sublimity  which  dazzle  us;  and  our  thought, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  religious,  urges  us  forward  in  the 
direction  of  comprehending  God  as  an  absolute 
Being  far  surpassing  anything  that  is  finite  and 
individual.  Yet  it  is  required  of  us  that  we  also 
shall  venture  to  address  the  living  God  as 
"Thou."     One  thing  we  must  make  perfectly 


GOD  AND  THE  SOUL  49 

clear  to  ourselves:  When  we  speak  of  God  as  a 
person  and  a  spirit,  when  we  term  Him  the 
Father  of  our  individual  life,  it  must  not  be 
thought  that  we  have  thereby  given  an  adequate 
theoretical  account  of  God's  nature.  We  know 
only  too  well  that  all  our  language  about  His 
inscrutable  nature  remains  mere  stammering 
and  faltering,  an  attempt  to  demonstrate  in 
picture  and  symbol  the  impalpable  and  the  in- 
tangible. On  the  other  hand,  we  know  equally 
well  that  a  purely  abstract  idea  of  God  will 
never  lead  man  to  Him,  and  that  picture  and 
symbol  are  the  only  things,  and  the  most  precious 
things,  that  we  possess,  and  can  never  be  re- 
placed by  or  resolved  into  pure  thought.  The 
symbol  of  God  the  Father  which  our  faith  gives 
us  teaches  that  God's  deepest  and  most  mys- 
terious being  is  to  be  found  in  what  we  call  per- 
sonality and  spirit — perhaps,  indeed,  far  beyond 
these,  but  certainly  not  in  the  direction  of  a 
natural  being  that  lacks  personality.  When  we 
call  God  the  Father  we  wish  to  express  the  idea 
that  in  this  concrete  Being  there  rules  a  strength 
and  a  might  which  determine  and  affirm  our 
personal  life  so  far  as  it  is  truly  worthy.  But  it 
always  is  and  remains  a  daring  act  of  our  faith, 
transcending  all  knowledge,  when,  in  spite  of 
the  distance  between  us  and  God,  we  address 


50  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

the  Almighty   as   Thou   and   pray  to   Him   as 
"our  Father  in  heaven." 

And  now  we  will  combine  both  aspects  of  our 
faith.  Our  faith  shows  us  the  remote,  veiled 
God  and  the  revealed  God,  ever  near  us;  it 
permits  us  to  say  to  the  all-powerful  God,  be- 
fore whom  our  inmost  being  trembles,  "And  yet 
we  belong  to  Thee,"  and  transforms  our  trem- 
bling fear  and  anguish  into  reverence,  humility, 
and  joyous  surrender.  And,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  prevents  us  from  approaching  God's  presence 
carelessly  and  presumptuously,  and  saying  the 
Lord's  Prayer  as  if  it  were  a  natural,  self-evi- 
dent truth.  Thus  our  faith  becomes  a  blessed 
miracle  and  a  mystery,  and  with  the  early 
Christians  we  acknowledge  both  when  we  say, 
"  I  believe  in  God  the  Father  Almighty,  Maker 
of  heaven  and  earth/' 


CHAPTER  IV 

DEDUCTIONS  FROM  OUR  FAITH 
PROVIDENCE    AND    PRAYER 

pvEPENDENCE  on  God  and  confidence  in 
^^  His  personal  care  for  us  are  intimately 
bound  up  in  our  belief  in  the  all-powerful  God 
as  the  God  of  our  life.  This  belief  is  announced 
in  the  gospel  with  absolute  boldness.  The  indi- 
vidual human  being,  so  far  as  he  turns  toward 
the  higher  life  within  himself,  so  far  as  he  up- 
lifts his  soul  to  God,  is  of  more  value  than  any- 
thing around  him  in  Nature;  of  more  value  than 
the  lilies  of  the  field,  the  birds  of  the  air,  and  all 
the  glories  of  Nature  which  God's  goodness  so 
lavishly  spreads  around  him,  and  he  is  quite 
sure  of  his  Father's  love  and  care.  "We  know 
that  to  them  that  love  God  all  things  work  to- 
gether for  good."  Our  faith  here  touches  a 
depth  and  a  mysteriousness  before  which  the 
reflective  intellect  of  man  must  tremble.  It  re- 
quires our  utmost  religious  energy  to  live  truly 
in  this  confidence  in  the  personal  providence  of 

51 


52  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

God.  Wherever  people  have  lost  their  feeling 
for  the  simple  truths  of  rehgion  in  the  cobwebs 
of  human  wisdom  and  artificial  dogma  they 
have  dared  to  disregard  the  belief  in  Divine 
Providence,  in  the  Christian  ''Trust  in  the 
Lord^^'  as  something  of  very  little  specific  value. 
Those  who  do  this  know  what  they  are  doing. 
One  thing  only  may  be  said  in  their  excuse: 
that  in  an  age  when  men's  thoughts  were  nar- 
row and  limited,  and  little  reverence  was  felt 
for  the  mighty  and  mysterious  reality  of  our 
own  existence,  the  belief  in  a  divine  Providence 
was  calmly  accepted  as  being  a  self-evident  fact 
attainable  without  difficulty  by  the  common- 
sense  of  mankind.  How  far  removed  are  these 
times  and  these  ideas  from  us  children  of  a  later 
day! 

There  is  no  point  which  is  more  open  to 
doubt  than  this  concerning  belief  in  a  Divine 
Providence  and  care  for  the  individual  being. 
We  must  guard  ourselves  with  all  our  strength 
against  these  doubts  which  assail  us  on  all  sides. 
And  this  we  can  do  if  we  observe  two  things: 
First  of  all,  we  must  look  into  our  own  personal 
life;  we  must  shut  our  eyes  to  the  terrible  reality 
around  us,  with  all  its  problems  and  inscrutable 
mysteries.  We  are  not  called  upon  to  solve  all 
these   problems   and   to   penetrate  these  mys- 


PROVIDENCE  AND  PRAYER  53 

teries,  "to  digest  the  universe  metaphorically." 
We  are  here  to  find  out  a  way  and  a  path  for 
ourselves  amid  the  great  inscrutability  of  exist- 
ence, to  discover  pillars  to  which  we  can  cling. 
And,  further,  a  second  thing  is  to  be  noticed: 
We  must  not,  as  so  often  happens,  compare  our 
happiness  and  unhappiness  and  strike  the  bal- 
ance between  them.  Who  says  that  we  are  here 
to  be  happy  ?  But  we  are  certainly  here  to  know 
and  do  the  work  which  life  has  assigned  to  us, 
to  stand  firm  at  the  post  to  which  we  are  ap- 
pointed, to  develop  the  higher  powers  of  our 
own  life,  to  find  God,  and  in  Him  the  object, 
the  measure,  and  the  meaning  of  our  own  life. 
And  when  we  thus  acknowledge  the  object  of 
our  existence,  we  shall  ask  ourselves  for  the 
first  time  whether  there  is  not  to  be  recognized 
in  the  guiding  of  our  life  a  friendly,  fatherly 
Power  which  surrounds  us  everywhere  with 
His  care,  and  draws  us  to  our  life's  goal,  not 
by  harsh,  legal  compulsion,  but  by  loving 
promises. 

When,  trembling  and  hesitating,  you  take  the 
first  step,  you  find  that  life  and  the  world  around 
you  begin  to  grow  bright.  And  in  what  you 
have  until  now  called  the  blind  caprice  and 
arbitrariness  of  fate  or  sport  of  chance,  in  the 
important  things  as  in  the  insignificant,  in  the 


54  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

bliss  of  happiness  and  in  the  bitter,  heart-break- 
ing, agonizing  moments  of  your  life,  in  the  light 
of  clear  day  and  in  the  darkness  of  anguish  and 
misery,  you  will  seek  to  grasp  the  hand  of  God, 
who  bears  and  supports  your  life.  He  speaks 
to  you;  question  Him,  pay  heed,  listen,  hear. 
Softly  the  voice  speaks  to  you  out  of  the  eternal 
heights,  like  the  voice  of  a  mother  calling  to  her 
child  who  has  wandered  away  in  the  wood. 
Louder  and  more  distinctly,  more  and  more 
frequently  it  speaks  to  you,  and  seldom  does  it 
leave  you,  even  in  the  hurry  and  bustle  of  every- 
day life.  Undreamt  of  powers  descend  upon 
you.  That  terrible  feeling  of  oppression  which 
burdened  your  soul,  the  fear  of  all  that  can  and 
may  happen  in  this  strange  life  of  ours,  gradu- 
ally disappears.  Doubt  and  uncertainty  begin 
to  pass  away;  step  by  step  at  first  we  gropingly 
feel  our  way,  but  ever  more  and  more  clearly 
our  path  in  life  is  revealed  to  us.  And  now 
there  begins  to  awaken  in  our  heart  that  rest 
and  holy  tranquillity  which  is  never  disturbed 
by  disappointments  or  adversity.  Even  heavy 
misfortune  no  longer  appears  as  a  fate  which 
overwhelms  us,  but  as  a  task  which  obliges  us  to 
develop  new  powers;  for  all  burdens  strengthen 
the  powers  of  our  life,  and  tribulations  stimu- 
late our  energies.    And  when  through  the  heavy 


PROVIDENCE  AND  PRAYER  55 

blows  of  fate  God  takes  away  our  strength,  bars 
our  way  and  shuts  the  door,  we  must  watch  to 
see  if  new  paths  are  not  revealed,  new  doors 
opened,  and  we  must  learn  to  say  with  St. 
Paul,  "For  when  I  am  weak  then  am  I  strong." 
Thus  we  are  in  agreement  with  the  following 
pious  confession:  "There  are  moments  in  each 
man's  life  when  he  is  conscious  of  a  design 
which  runs  through  his  whole  existence,  a  plan 
which  he  has  not  designed  and  does  not  com- 
plete, the  thought  of  which  delights  him  as 
much  as  if  he  had  planned  it  out  himself,  and 
the  execution  of  which  seems  to  bring  him 
blessings  and  peculiar  advantages,  though  his 
own  hands  have  not  carried  it  out.  He  is  free, 
as  the  chess-player  is  free  to  make  his  moves, 
but  at  the  same  time  he  is  not  his  own  master 
any  more  than  the  chess-player  who  is  forced  to 
move  by  a  superior  opponent.  He  is  conscious 
that  the  end  of  the  game  will  not  be  checkmate 
for  him,  but  victory  through  defeat,  and  the 
nearer  this  end  draws  the  more  impatiently  he 
awaits  it,  rejoicing  in  the  will,  scarcely  to  be 
misunderstood  any  longer,  of  Him  who  has 
forced  free  man  into  a  position  where  the  high- 
est freedom  will  be  found,  because  unlimited 
opportunity  for  the  development  and  display  of 
his  capacities  will  be  granted  him"  (Lagarde). 


56  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

This  belief  in  the  personal  God  who  guards 
our  life,  so  far  as  it  really  deserves  to  be  called 
life,  is,  essentially,  belief  in  a  wonderful  God 
who  works  miracles.  We  touch  here  the  very 
kernel  of  the  Christian  belief  in  miracles;  we 
see  the  abiding  truth  of  the  saying,  "A  miracle 
is  the  best-beloved  child  of  faith." 

Hence  our  faith  denies  a  conception  of  the 
world  in  which  the  world  would  resemble  an 
artificially  contrived  machine  regulated  in  every 
separate  part,  which  would  revolve  in  accord- 
ance with  law  after  it  had  received  the  first  im- 
pulse from  the  Almighty.  For  that  would  be, 
above  all  else,  a  universe  where  belief  in  a  per- 
sonal Providence  could  not  thrive.  On  the 
contrary,  we  believe  that  our  God  is  present  in 
all  that  happens  in  the  world,  that  He  is  always 
at  work.  Out  of  the  richness  and  depths  of  His 
being  new  powers  and  new  manifestations  con- 
tinually stream  into  the  ever-growing  creation, 
and  human  individuahties  are  the  centres  of  His 
creating  and  His  moving  power  so  far  as  they 
rise  from  the  lower  material  life  toward  the 
height  of  His  being  and  nature. 

On  the  other  hand,  our  behef  in  no  wise  de- 
mands what  is  called  the  abrogation,  violation, 
and  alteration  of  the  course  of  nature.  We  do 
not  need  this  proof  of  the  reality  and  power  of 


PROVIDENCE  AND  PRAYER  57 

our  God,  and,  indeed,  we  consider  it  a  sign  of 
want  of  faith  to  seek  for  events  in  the  world 
which  may  show  clearly  to  the  gross  senses  of 
man  and  to  his  intellect,  with  its  rationalistic 
conceptions,  that  here  there  is  an  undeniable 
interposition  of  Almighty  God. 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  an  essential  part  of  our 
faith  in  the  self-revealed  God  who  is  ever  near 
to  us  that  He  should  keep  within  the  ordinances 
which  He  Himself  has  decreed.  We  believe 
God  to  be  a  God  of  law  and  order,  and  not  of 
mere  caprice  and  arbitrary  will.  We  believe  in 
the  God  of  goodness  and  loving-kindness,  who 
has  granted  us  to  apprehend,  at  least  in  part,  the 
laws  and  regulations  of  His  operations,  who 
gave  us  understanding,  and  does  not  arbitrarily 
mock  at  it.  We  know  our  God  desires  that  we 
should  dwell  in  confidence  on  the  sure  founda- 
tion of  a  known  and  controlled  reality — however 
small  may  be  the  part  of  this  reality  known  to 
us — and  that  we  should  not  be  kept  in  anguish 
and  apprehension  by  a  crushing  and  capricious 
despotism.  Further,  we  do  not  fear  that  be- 
cause we  possess  knowledge,  which  is  after  all 
but  fragmentary,  and  power  to  rise  to  a  sense  of 
security  and  to  a  control  of  Nature,  at  best  but 
partial,  we  shall  thereby  lose  our  belief  in  the 
greatness  and  inscrutability  of  our  God  and  our 

/    ■---   "^ , 

^university] 

or 


58  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

reverence  for  Him.  Our  faith  only  claims  that, 
humanly  speaking,  our  God  knows  a  thousand 
ways  and  means  within  the  limits  of  the  given 
laws,  ordinances,  and  connections  of  approach- 
ing the  individual,  surrounding  him  with  His 
goodness  and  care,  upHfting  him  to  the  com- 
munity of  spirits  whose  spiritual  link  He  is,  and 
raising  him  toward  Himself.  Our  faith  claims 
that  this  reality,  in  the  deepest  sense  of  the 
word,  is  not  a  law  which  crushes  us,  but  Divine 
will,  Divine  goodness.  It  is  Divine  will  within 
the  law.  It  is  Divine  will  which  does  not,  noisily 
and  with  uproar,  destroy  all  opposition;  but 
gently,  noiselessly,  softly,  and  wisely,  visible 
only  to  the  eye  of  the  believer,  it  operates  in  the 
affairs  of  the  world. 

When  we  want  to  form  a  picture,  a  symbol  of 
Divine  activity,  we  think  of  a  great,  dominating, 
human  personality.  What  is  the  secret  of  that 
charm,  the  influence  of  which  almost  approaches 
omnipotence  .^  It  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  vio- 
lent destruction  of  all  obstacles,  in  the  assertion 
of  power.  It  is  quite  otherwise.  We  believe 
that  this  personality  guides  and  controls  from 
within,  as  it  were.  It  seems  as  if  it  is  to  be 
found  again  and  again  guiding  events  and 
human  beings.  It  does  not  compel  from  with- 
out;   it  works  with  the  very  essence  of  things. 


PROVIDENCE  AND  PRAYER  59 

The  irresistible  nature  of  its  influence  rests  upon 
this  fact  that  everything  appears  to  happen 
spontaneously,  to  take  place  owing  to  its  own 
impulse.  Thus  such  a  man  expresses  what  the 
world  around  is  already  trying  to  achieve, 
realizes  the  inarticulate  longings  of  men,  and 
embodies  their  unconscious  strivings  and  ten- 
dencies. High  on  his  shoulders  he  carries  his 
race  and  his  age,  and,  swiftly  carried  along 
by  the  shouts  of  enthusiasm,  he  reaches  his 
goal. 

Again  let  us  consider  the  influence  of  a  real 
personality  in  narrower  circumstances.  What 
a  wonderful,  marvellous  spectacle  it  is!  We 
may,  perhaps,  be  able  to  guess  at  his  goal,  but 
we  shall  not  be  able  to  foresee  the  path  by  which 
it  is  reached.  Where  dizzy  and  steep  precipices 
stand  between  him  and  his  goal,  and  where  the 
eyes  of  the  average  man  would  see  no  way  across, 
he  finds  one  and  traverses  it  safely.  Confidently 
and  with  undimmed  vision  he  finds  out  of  the 
thousand  possible  ways  just  the  one  which 
leads  to  his  goal. 

If  we  once  have  the  courage  to  think  of  God^s 
being  and  operations  as  of  the  nature  of  per- 
sonality transfigured,  we  shall  then  understand 
something  of  the  mystery;  we  shall  begin  to 
see  how  God  works  within  the  law  in   things 


6o  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

and  with  things,  yet  in  such  a  way  that,  finally, 
it  is  not  the  law  with  its  mechanical  necessity 
that  is  the  moving  impulse,  but  the  living  God, 
to  whom  every  necessity  of  the  law  becomes 
but  a  means  to  His  end. 

Prayer  corresponds  in  the  practical  conduct 
of  our  rehgious  life  with  the  belief  in  the  per- 
sonal providence  of  God.  Christianity  is  the 
religion  of  prayer;  prayer  is  its  crown  and  its 
pearl.  The  central  idea  of  Indian  piety  is 
meditation,  the  absorption  of  the  individual  in 
the  life-spirit,  the  experience  of  identity  with 
the  universality  and  oneness  of  the  Godhead. 
Our  faith  in  personal  providence  breathes  and 
lives  in  prayer  in  which  the  reality  that  sustains 
us  and  surrounds  us  with  its  goodness  is  united 
with  a  person  whom  we  can  address  as  "Thou.'* 
Here  prayer  is  the  only  means  of  intercourse. 
Everything  else  that  was  of  significance  in  the 
other  religions — sacrifice  and  worship,  oracles, 
ceremonies,  and  observances — no  longer  plays 
a  part  in  the  gospel  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Sac- 
ramental observances  also  were  unknown  to 
Jesus;  He  did  not  institute  baptism  in  His  life- 
time, and  it  is  merely  tradition  that  ascribes  its 
institution  to  the  risen  Lord.  He  could  hardly 
have  thought  of  the  feast  of  the  Last  Supper  as 
an  act  to  be  repeated.    But  the  Gospels  tell  us 


PROVIDENCE  AND  PRAYER  6i 

how  He  Himself  prayed,  how  He  went  up  into 
the  mountain  alone  to  converse  in  solitude  with 
His  heavenly  Father,  and,  above  all,  they  tell  us 
how  Jesus  taught  His  disciples  to  pray.  The 
most  precious  legacy  that  He  bequeathed  to  His 
followers,  a  bond  of  union  to-day  and  in  days  to 
come,  which  may  be  rightly  called  the  sole  and 
genuine  symbol  of  the  Christian  Faith  for  all 
ages  and  all  generations,  is  the  Lord's  Prayer; 
and  wherever  Christianity  has  deliberated  about 
itself,  stripped  off  its  ancient  vestments  and 
destroyed  old  worn-out  forms,  the  simple,  per- 
sonal prayer  has  again  become  the  palladium  of 
our  religion. 

But  what  is  prayer  ?  It  is,  when  we  compre- 
hend it  in  its  deepest  and  most  peculiar  signifi- 
cance, a  dialogue  between  our  innermost  self 
and  Almighty  God,  a  real  and  true  experience. 
It  is  an  uplifting  of  the  human  soul  to  the 
highest  reality,  God  condescending  and  bend- 
ing toward  the  individual  human  soul.  It  is 
a  mystery  of  whose  deepest  and  innermost 
truth  and  splendor  we  are,  perhaps,  only  fully 
conscious  at  rare  moments  in  our  lives. 

It  is  of  the  highest  importance  to  maintain 
this  point  of  view  in  order  to  meet  an  objection 
which  is  often  raised  far  too  rashly  and  capri- 
ciously when  the  question  of  prayer  is  consid- 


62  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

ered.  Have  we  the  right,  and  Is  it  possible,  to 
pray  for  this  and  that — to  pray  that  definite 
outward  events  and  incidents  should  come  to 
pass  ?  It  is  here  that  disputes  and  scepticism 
come  in  which  strike  at  the  most  important  and 
holiest  part  of  our  religious  life,  and  shake  its 
very  foundations.  For  an  apologetic,  wrongly 
applied,  has  directed  its  attention  to  this  very 
point,  and  feels  obliged  to  assert  that  the  course 
of  events  and  outward  aflFairs  is  indeed  altered 
through  prayer,  otherwise  prayer  would  really 
effect  nothing,  and  it  would  simply  be  mere 
feeling  and  declamation. 

We  must  try  to  get  rid  of  this  doubt  to  which 
an  over-zealous  faith  has  exposed  prayer;  we 
must  establish  the  most  important  fact  in  our 
religious  life  on  a  perfectly  sure  foundation. 
Let  us  at  once  admit  quite  frankly  that  nothing 
in  the  outside  material  world  will  be  altered 
through  our  prayer,  that  nothing  will  happen 
that  would  not  have  happened  without  our 
prayer.  How  then  do  matters  stand  ?  In  spite 
of  this,  prayer  remains  an  absolutely  real  and 
efficacious  fact.  Everything  around  us  may, 
indeed,  remain  unchanged,  but  we  ourselves,  at 
any  rate,  are  changed  by  prayer.  And  this  sig- 
nifies a  very  great  deal.  For  God's  personal 
care  for  us,  in  which  we  believe,  would  be  per- 


PROVIDENCE  AND  PRAYER  63 

fectly  ineffectual  if  we  individuals  did  not  under- 
stand and  comprehend  it,  if  we  did  not  rightly 
interpret  and  understand  the  guidance  which 
God  brings  to  our  life,  if  we  went  to  the  left 
when  God  commanded  us  to  go  to  the  right. 
Prayer,  then,  may  be  regarded  above  all  else  as 
listening  to  His  will  which  is  revealed  to  us  as 
the  personal  appropriation  of  His  providence. 
Only  through  prayer  does  the  actual  world  with 
which  God  surrounds  us  become,  as  it  were, 
clear  to  us.  Chance  is  revealed  as  God's  own 
design,  and  the  apparently  meaningless  in  life 
becomes  full  of  meaning.  Prayer  and  Divine 
Providence  are  the  two  closely  connected  poles 
of  our  higher  life  dedicated  to  God,  and  one 
without  the  other  is  inconceivable.  Thus  prayer 
becomes  a  very  serious  and  a  very  real  thing. 
Prayer  means  that  we  penetrate  through  the 
outward  appearances  of  things  to  the  truth  and 
to  the  real  meaning  of  our  life  which  springs 
from  God.  To  pray  means  to  live  truly,  but  it 
also  means  "to  stand  in  judgment  of  ourselves," 
to  place  ourselves  with  all  our  wilfulness  and 
our  perversity  before  God,  to  abjure  the  foolish- 
ness and  the  selfish  desires  of  our  lower  self. 
Thus  in  this  universal  and  broad  sense  of  the 
word  prayer  becomes  a  task  of  our  life  which 
we  must  never  neglect.    To  pray  is  to  lead  our 


64  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

life  under  God's  eyes  and  to  accept  our  life 
from  His  hands.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  the 
New  Testament  speaks  of  "Prayer  without 
ceasing." 

If  our  life  is  based  on  this  foundation,  this 
attitude  will  again  and  again  be  concentrated 
in  definite  prayers  for  this  and  that.  We  shall 
again  and  again  think  and  feel  that  a  definite 
course  of  events  may  be  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance for  our  inward,  higher  life — perhaps,  in- 
deed, according  to  our  judgment,  necessary  for 
its  successful  development.  Now,  so  our  faith 
tells  us,  we  are  not  forbidden  to  ask  God  con- 
cerning the  shaping  of  outward  events  and  oc- 
currences, and  in  such  cases  there  is  no  absolute 
and  permanent  dividing  line  between  the  im- 
portant and  the  unimportant,  the  inward  life 
and  outward  facts.  But,  indeed,  at  each  special 
prayer  we  tell  ourselves  that  God  knows  what 
we  need  before  we  ask  Him,  and  gives  according 
to  His  judgment;  and  to  every  such  prayer  we 
add  what  Jesus  taught  us  in  the  darkest  hour 
of  His  life,  "Not  my  will,  but  Thine  be  done." 
And  so  our  prayer  of  entreaty  is  but  the  expres- 
sion and  the  vivid,  intuitive  feeling  that  in  a  par- 
ticular case  we  receive  our  whole  life  from  God's 
hands. 

Prayer  and  Divine  Providence  stand  together 


PROVIDENCE  AND  PRAYER  65 

as  ebb  and  flow;  our  selfish  obstinacy  must 
dwindle  away,  the  natural  man  must  be  checked, 
so  that  the  eternal  will  of  God  by  which  He 
encompasses  our  whole  being  may  stream  in 
upon  us. 


CHAPTER  V 

DEDUCTIONS   FROM   OUR  FAITH 
GOD   AND   THE    GOOD 

TT  is  an  essential  characteristic  of  our  belief 
that  it  is  bound  up  with  the  individual  Hfe, 
so  far  as  this  is  concerned  with  God  and  the 
higher  things  of  life.  When  we  ask  what  the 
important  things  in  life  are,  we  at  once  admit 
that  moral  good  occupies  the  first  and  the  most 
conspicuous  place  among  them.  Moral  good 
and  the  value  of  the  individual  life  are  two 
things  which  are  most  intimately  connected. 

Let  us  consider  in  relation  to  this  the  value 
of  human  civilization.  No  one  can  deny  that 
civilization  furnishes  us  with  valuable  things 
and  possessions,  but  they  are  and  remain  physi- 
cal, material.  Civilization  merely  procures  for 
us  the  means  and  the  material  for  the  building 
up  of  our  personal  life;  it  takes  man  to  the 
point  where  the  work  of  his  own  life  must  begin. 
Hence  this  civilization  may  become  an  unbear- 
able burden,  when,  owing  to  the  enormous  bulk 

66 


GOD  AND  THE  GOOD  67 

of  its  wealth  and  the  breathlessness  of  its 
activity,  it  deprives  the  individual  of  the  energy 
to  lead  his  ow^n  life  according  to  the  law  of  his 
own  nature.  It  may  become  a  fatal  danger,  for 
it  threatens  to  reduce  the  individual  to  a  mere 
tool,  to  a  tiny  wheel  in  the  enormous  machine 
which  it  drives.  When  this  happens  we  hear 
from  time  to  time  the  despairing  cry  of  man, 
"Away  with  civilization,  let  us  return  to  the 
simplicity  and  plainness  of  Nature."  But,  in 
truth,  to  follow  this  cry  would  be  to  add  a 
second  mistake  to  the  first.  It  is  as  difficult  for 
man  to  dispense  with  civilization  as  to  bear  it. 
Civilization  and  individual  personality  are  two 
powers  which,  forever  in  serious  conflict,  are 
yet  dependent  on  each  other. 

Let  us  consider,  further,  those  things  con- 
nected with  human  society  which  are  of  higher 
value  than  civilization.  We  will  first  of  all  take 
law.  Law  has  certainly  a  value  which  enters 
very  deeply  into  the  moral  and  religious  life, 
but  it  must  keep  in  its  right  place  according  to 
its  value.  The  history  of  religion  shows  us 
clearly  that  a  too  close  connection  between  re- 
ligion and  law  injures  both.  During  long  ages, 
religion,  through  the  power  of  its  holy  tradition, 
has  burdened  the  law  with  foreign  ingredients, 
whilst  religion  has  suffered  deeply  by  allowing 


68  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

legal  conceptions  to  predominate.  All  specifi- 
cally legal  conceptions  when  applied  to  religion 
have  always  been  harmful  to  it.  For  law,  in 
accordance  with  its  very  nature,  acts  in  the 
region  of  the  impersonal,  or,  at  any  rate,  remote 
from  the  personal.  It  has  always  striven  to  find 
and  to  establish  rules  and  regulations  which  are 
legally  absolute,  universally  binding,  and  only 
to  be  enforced  by  compulsion.  It  gives  to  human 
life  in  society  its  proper  foundation,  and  thereby 
helps  toward  the  successful  development  of  the 
higher  things  in  human  life,  but  it  must  not  be 
confused  with  these  higher  things. 

Then  who  would  forego  the  mighty  value  of 
wisdom  and  knowledge  and  truth  i  Woe  to  the 
religion  which  stifles  the  search  for  truth !  Woe 
to  the  faith  which  shuts  out  free  thought  and 
investigation!  According  to  our  faith  we  are 
to  worship  God  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  It  is, 
however,  an  old  saying  that  has  almost  become 
stereotyped,  that  piety  and  faith  are  not  by  any 
means  knowledge  and  understanding.  That  is 
quite  true;  all  real  knowledge  and  understand- 
ing ceases  just  at  the  point  which  our  faith  tells 
us  is  the  highest  point.  It  ceases  when  we  come 
to  the  individual  life  and  personality.  Knowl- 
edge extends  to  the  universal,  to  the  investiga- 
tion of  necessary  relations  and  laws;   the  final 


GOD  AND  THE  GOOD  69 

living  thing  which  is  evolved  is  and  remains 
eternally  mysterious  and  incomprehensible.  If 
it  were  to  be  comprehended  by  knowledge,  it 
would  no  longer  be  life.  The  man  who  devotes 
himself  to  knowledge  and  understanding  in  a 
spirit  of  truth  and  single-mindedness  must  sur- 
render his  own  life  in  this  work  of  his;  he  must 
be  "objective,"  and  allow  all  kinds  of  things, 
people,  and  facts,  to  speak  for  themselves,  he 
must  be  prepared  to  put  on  one  side  continually 
his  wishes  and  hopes  and  his  dislikes  and  his 
likes.  In  the  building  up  of  our  inner  personal 
life  knowledge  has  a  critical  but  not  a  creative 
value. 

And  lastly  there  is  the  world  of  the  Beautiful. 
Manifold  are  the  Hnes  which  cross  and  intersect 
each  other  and  join  art  and  religion.  And  in 
this  mutual  connection  each  has  helped  the 
other,  provided  that  each  has  remained  true  to 
its  own  nature,  and  has  not  overstepped  the 
dividing  lines,  often  so  delicate.  But  in  accord- 
ance with  their  nature,  art  and  aesthetic  pleasure 
lead  to  the  opposite  regions  from  those  in  which 
the  life  of  personal  belief  breathes  and  flour- 
ishes. They  take  us  to  the  regions  where  our 
personal  existence  is  brought  into  close  union 
with  the  world  of  nature;  they  extend  our  ego, 
so  that  it  beats  in  sympathy  with  the  pain  and 


70  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

joy  of  the  universe  surrounding  us,  and  oscillates 
in  harmony  with  the  rhythm  of  the  great  uni- 
versal life  that  pulsates  around  us. 


"  Spirit  sublime,  didst  freely  give  me  all — 

This  glorious  Nature  thou  didst  for  my  kingdom  give, 

deep  within  her  breast  to  read 
As  in  the  bosom  of  a  friend,  didst  grant  me. 
Thou  leadest  past  mine  eyes  the  long  array 
Of  living  things,  mak'st  known  to  me  my  brethren, 
Within  the  silent  copse,  the  air,  the  water. 
When  in  the  wood  the  tempest  roars  and  creaks, 

Then  to  the  sheltering  cave  dost  lead  me,  then 
Me  to  myself  dost  show." 

Along  this  path  must  the  human  being  jour- 
ney when  he  strives  after  the  higher  things  of 
life.  If  our  faith  reveals  to  us  the  deep  abysses 
of  our  existence,  presses  us  to  a  decision,  urges 
us  upward  and  forward,  and  places  before  us 
the  Divine  thou  shalty  and  thou  shalt  noty  art 
shows  us  a  world  in  harmony  and  union,  or  in 
the  bewitching  beauty  of  greatness  and  sub- 
limity. In  the  beautiful  semblance  and  in  the 
illusions  of  fancy  it  foreshadows  for  us  the 
deeper  relations  of  reality  and  a  higher  har- 


GOD  AND  THE  GOOD  71 

mony  of  life,  of  which  our  faith  speaks  hope- 
fully, as  of  a  future  city  and  an  eternal  world. 
Herein  lies  the  ultimate  possibility  of  an  alli- 
ance between  religion  and  art  and  a  furtherance 
of  each  other's  aims.  But  the  difference  and 
partial  opposition  still  remain.  Faith  must  not 
bind  itself  too  closely  with  an  earthly  power 
which  consciously  builds  upon  the  beautiful 
appearance  of  things;  faith  must  accept  this 
world  as  it  actually  is,  must  put  up  with  circum- 
stances as  they  exist  in  this  imperfect  and  in- 
explicable universe.  History  teaches  that  art, 
seemingly  in  union  with  religion,  again  and 
again  became  "the  betrayer  of  religion.'' 

Thus  the  ideal  of  moral  good  still  remains 
the  most  faithful  companion  of  faith.  It  has 
become  a  familiar  thought  to  us,  children  of  a 
later  day,  that  the  value,  strength,  and  perma- 
nence of  the  individual  life  are  best  secured  in 
morality  and  its  claims.  Here,  and  here  alone, 
the  individual  life  finds  an  absolute  and  final 
anchorage.  Here  we  have  a  power  that  is  equal 
to  all  the  opposing  forces  of  outward  circum- 
stances, a  miracle  that  is  more  astonishing  and 
more  profound  than  anything  in  the  natural 
world  around  us.  In  the  command  thou  shalty 
which  rules  our  behavior  and  our  acts,  we  pos- 
sess a  bulwark  and  a  shield  which  screen  and 


72  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

guard  us  against  everything  in  the  whole  world. 
For  whilst  we  perceive  everywhere  in  Nature 
the  ebb  and  flow  of  things,  that  command  of 
thou  shah  urges  us  forward,  makes  us  conscious 
of  growth  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  stage,  and 
indicates  that  there  is  likewise  a  similar  steady 
growth  in  the  mighty  reality  around  us. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  morality  is  meant  to 
be  perfected  through  faith.  By  itself  it  would 
ever  remain  a  fragment,  a  riddle,  an  unendura- 
ble, aimless  burden.  Who  are  we  men,  impris- 
oned and  conditioned  everywhere  in  space  and 
time  by  the  iron  laws  of  existence,  and  placed 
in  an  infinite  world  whose  depths  we  cannot 
sound,  much  less  govern — ^who,  I  say,  are  we 
men  that  we  should  arrive  at  the  belief  that  we 
possess  within  ourselves  a  final,  eternal,  invio- 
lable pattern,  an  absolute  law  of  our  being,  and 
the  capacity  freely  to  shape  our  own  life  }  Like 
the  waves  which  wash  against  the  rock  and 
crumble  it  to  pieces,  these  doubts,  ever  return- 
ing, assail  the  only  thing  in  our  life  that  is  fixed 
and  certain.  And  these  would  destroy  the  rock 
(and  have  already  destroyed  it  almost  every- 
where) if  faith  did  not  approach  morality  and 
say  to  us,  "You  are  not  the  sport  of  natural 
law,  you  stand  in  close  connection  with  the  deep- 
est spiritual  reality.  What  you  feel  to  be  the  law 


GOD  AND  THE  GOOD  73 

of  your  existence  and  the  higher  Hfe  within  you 
is  the  expression  of  the  will  of  this  reality  which 
forces  itself  on  you;  it  is  the  voice  of  your  God, 
and  the  law  through  which  He  leads  us  all  to 
the  development  of  our  higher  self.'* 

It  is  a  characteristic  of  our  Christian  religion 
that  it  unites  in  the  simplest  fashion  piety  freed 
from  everything  that  is  non-essential,  and  moral 
good  purified  of  all  deformities.  Jesus  of  Naz- 
areth gave  to  His  God  and  Father  a  title  of 
honor  which  was  not  to  be  shared  with  any  one : 
"None  is  good,  save  One,  even  God."  God  is 
good,  and  he  who  desires  to  find  God  must 
seek  Him  in  the  good. 

But  now  the  questions  which  arise  urge  us  on. 
If,  then,  the  Christian  belief  regards  God  and 
moral  good  as  one,  what  is  this  moral  good, 
what  is  its  meaning  f  We  reply  with  one  word, 
"Love."  "Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God 
with  all  thy  heart,  and  thy  neighbor  as  thyself." 

Love — at  first  sight  there  seems  very  little 
that  is  new  and  original  to  be  said  about  it. 
We  must,  however,  comprehend  it  very  pre- 
cisely, and  consider  it  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  history  of  religion. 

Love  occupied  a  very  prominent  position 
in  the  ethic  of  Brahminism  and  Buddhism. 
"Everything  that  we  do  in  this  life  to  gain 


74  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

religious  desert  is  not  worth  a  sixteenth  of  the 
value  of  love/*  so  Indian  piety  asserts!  But  the 
meaning  is  there  quite  different  from  our  defini- 
tion. To  us  love  means  a  sympathetic  active 
will  toward  and  with  another.  To  us  love  is 
trust  and  delight  in  something  of  incomparable 
value  which  we  find  in  another's  life.  In  the 
Indian  ethic  love  is  based  upon  compassion; 
to  love  means  to  sympathize  with  another's  suf- 
ferings, to  help  to  bear  his  burdens,  to  suffer 
with  him,  for  all  individual  life  is  necessarily 
painful,  purposeless,  meaningless.  Individual 
beings,  having  all  to  bear  the  common  burden 
of  existence,  must  unite  in  sympathy  which 
binds  the  sufferers  together.  There  is  in  all  this 
no  common  purpose  and,  pressing  forward  and 
upward,  no  common  aim;  at  its  best  it  is  a 
common  desire  for  the  dissolution  or  annihila- 
tion of  the  individual  existence  and  its  suffer- 
ings— that  is  to  say,  there  is  a  will  which,  in- 
stead of  becoming  stronger  and  more  powerful, 
and  lending  the  individual  wings  wherewith  to 
rise,  grows  ever  weaker  and  weaker  and  finally 
sinks  into  nothingness. 

The  word  love  confronts  us,  likewise,  in  the 
lofty  civilization  of  the  Greek  world;  and  here 
the  word  has  a  full  and  vigorous  sound,  a  char- 
acteristic which  is  directly  opposed  to  the  ideal 


GOD  AND  THE  GOOD  75 

of  love  described  above,  for  its  roots  are  fixed 
only  too  firmly  in  material,  concrete  existence. 
Love  is  here  the  higher,  purer,  and  nobler 
brother  of  sensual  love  and  natural  desire. 
Love,  as  it  streams  out  toward  us  in  Plato's 
symposium  in  the  "Phaedrus'^  is  friendship,  the 
sympathy  of  affinities,  the  rushing  together  of 
kindred  souls.  Love  is  the  very  flower  of  life 
which  it  fills  with  intoxicating  fragrance;  it  is 
the  harmony  of  spirits,  not  without  a  touch  of 
sensual  feeling,  the  sensual  perceptions  lending 
strength  and  intensity  to  the  harmony,  while  the 
harmony  ennobles  and  consecrates  the  sensual 
perceptions.  To  this  genuinely  Hellenic  con- 
ception of  love  and  friendship  there  was  added 
in  the  later  Hellenic  philosophy  a  more  humane 
and  cosmopolitan  conception,  the  feeling  of  a 
duty  toward  every  one,  toward  even  slaves  and 
barbarians;  a  perception  of  the  solidarity  of 
the  whole  human  race  which  derived  its  origin 
from  the  same  mighty  Power  and  was  subject 
to  the  same  laws  of  existence.  But  these  new 
thoughts  and  conceptions  lacked,  to  a  very  con- 
siderable degree,  the  strength  by  which  the  old 
ideas  had  taken  possession  of  the  hearts  of  the 
Greeks.  They  rose  to  no  lofty  heights,  they  did 
not  inspire  great  deeds;  there  was  too  much 
mere  reflection  and  declamatory  pathos. 


76  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

Let  us  carry  the  analysis  farther  and  see  what 
love  meant  in  the  Old  Testament.  Here  we 
find  indeed  the  text,  "Thou  shalt  love  thy 
neighbor  as  thyself/'  but  at  the  same  time  it  is 
clear  that  this  command  was  at  first  limited  to 
fellow-countrymen,  and  that  love  rested  on  the 
basis  of  natural  sympathy  and  nationality. 
Only  very  gradually  did  there  enter  into  later 
Judaism  the  thought  of  the  solidarity  of  all 
mankind,  and  man  was  put  almost  on  a  level 
with  a  compatriot.  I  say  almost  on  a  level,  for 
the  above-mentioned  feeling  of  national  obliga- 
tion was  never  really  completely  overcome.  It 
is  only  in  the  gospel  that  we  get  the  final  and 
real  freedom;  it  was  accomplished  quietly;  the 
old  forms  were  not  destroyed  utterly,  but  under- 
mined. And  we  know  how  powerful  these  were, 
for  we  see  how  Jesus  the  Deliverer  had  to  wrestle 
with  the  old  ideas  in  His  own  soul.  It  is,  never- 
theless, a  fact  that  in  the  gospel  of  Jesus  and 
His  personality  a  new  and  higher  ideal  of  life 
was  given  to  mankind,  which  united  man  and 
man  leaped  over  the  boundaries  of  all  nation- 
alities. A  generation  later  St.  Paul  announced 
triumphantly  the  breaking  down  of  all  these  bar- 
riers and  the  unification  of  mankind  in  Chris- 
tianity. 
R^  In  truth  a  great  abyss  yawns  between  Jesus^s 


GOD  AND  THE  GOOD  77 

gospel  of  love  and  the  conception  held  by  the 
Pharisees  of  later  Judaism,  the  roots  of  which 
reach  far  back  to  the  Old  Testament.  The  con- 
tradiction was  felt  instinctively  on  both  sides. 
On  the  one  hand  the  pious  among  the  people 
did  not  understand  Jesus's  work  of  love.  They 
saw  in  Him  an  unpractical  and  even,  perhaps, 
a  dangerous  philanthropist.  "He  eats  with 
publicans  and  sinners."  On  the  other  hand — 
however  much  it  may  be  disputed — it  is  prob- 
able that  in  the  Parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son 
Jesus  expressed  this  antithesis.  The  elder 
brother,  his  deepest  feeling  offended  and 
wounded  in  his  zeal  for  justice  and  duty,  who 
stands  in  such  perplexity  before  the  boundless 
love  of  the  father  for  the  prodigal  son,  was 
a  symbol  to  Jesus  of  the  correct  society  of  the 
pious  of  His  age.  What  was  the  difference  be- 
tween Jesus  and  His  contemporaries .?  To  the 
Pharisees  love  signified  something  quite  other- 
wise from  what  it  did  to  Him.  To  them  it 
meant  doing  what  was  right  and  straightfor- 
ward, doing  what  another  can  rightly  demand 
of  us,  not  doing  what  we  should  not  like  another 
to  do  to  us.  The  fulfilment  of  duties,  reasona- 
bleness, justice — these  are  the  pillars  of  the 
Pharisaic  system  of  ethics. 
The  gospel  means  much  more  than  this;    it 


78  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

desires  the  text,  "  Love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself,  '^ 
to  be  taken  quite  literally.  *'As  thyself" — this 
means  that  we  are  to  surround  our  neighbor, 
our  fellow-man,  with  the  same  warmth  and  the 
deep  sympathy  which  we  give  to  ourselves.  To 
love  one's  neighbor  does  not  mean  merely  to  give 
him  what  belongs  to  him  by  right  and  equity,  as 
if  justice  and  equity  are  the  only  points  of  view 
from  which  I  contemplate  myself.  To  love 
one's  neighbor  means  not  merely  to  further  his 
aims,  to  make  them  one's  own;  it  means  to  feel 
joy  in  intercourse  with  him,  and  by  so  doing  to 
reach  in  this  common  life  a  truer,  more  real, 
and  higher  life  than  if  we  stood  isolated.  To 
love  one's  neighbor,  one's  fellow-man — even  if 
we  have  no  personal  sympathy  with  him — not  as 
our  fellow-sufferer  in  the  universal,  inevitable 
wretchedness,  but  as  a  fighter  and  ally  in  the 
struggle  for  the  highest  things  in  life — ^that  is 
something  of  what  the  gospel  means  when  it 
demands  love  of  its  followers. 

Is,  then,  this  demand  reasonable,  and  is  its 
fulfilment  possible  .?  The  coolly  reasoning,  com- 
mon-sense intellect  answers  "No,"  a  thousand 
times  over.  It  judges  that  such  love  is  impos- 
sible, or  only  possible,  perhaps,  so  far  as  the 
basis  of  sympathy  extends,  but  impossible 
toward  mankind   as  such.     The  dull,   stupid. 


GOD  AND  THE  GOOD  79 

commonplace  crowd  who  grovel  on  the  earth, 
and  spend  themselves  in  commonplace,  every- 
day things — are  we  to  love  these;  and  not  only 
those  who  are  beautiful  and  glorious,  who  are 
healthy,  happy,  and  strong,  but  the  ugly,  the 
sick,  the  weak,  and  the  disagreeable — life's 
step-children  ?  And  those  who  try  our  patience 
a  thousandfold,  who  often  wrong  us,  who  check 
us  and  hinder  us — are  we  to  love  them  ?  That 
is  impossible;  here  it  is  surely  our  duty  to  hate. 
Love  would  be  contemptible  compliance  and 
cowardice,  or  weak,  idle  good-nature.  And, 
moreover,  are  we  to  love  our  enemy  f  Love  of 
an  enemy  is  a  mere  phrase  of  hypocrisy,  or  sim- 
ply deceitful  and  concealed  prudence  which  tri- 
umphs all  the  more  certainly  over  the  enemy 
by  cool,  calculating  self-control  and  restrained 
anger. 

The  gospel  replies  to  this  No  with  a  decided, 
quiet  Tes.  Jesus  lived  this  love.  He  loved  just 
the  commonplace,  ordinary  people — ^just  those 
to  whom  He  was  not  attracted  by  sympathy, 
who  indeed  shocked  His  holy  and  upright  soul, 
and  whom  good  society  passed  by  with  con- 
tempt. Yet  no  one  can  reproach  Jesus  with 
weakness  and  sentimental  philanthropy.  His 
was  an  austere,  proud,  and  kingly  nature.  He 
gripped  the  soul  of  men  to  whom  He  turned  in 


8o  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

love;    He  roused  and  stirred  their  whole  being 
and  forced  them  to  an  absolutely  new  life. 

The  gospel  gives  us  the  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem. It  demands  and  proclaims  this  love  in 
God's  name.  Supposing  such  love  is  impossible 
to  man's  natural  self,  faith  in  God  gives  a 
strength  which  removes  mountains  and  flings 
the  trees  into  the  ocean.  With  faith  nothing  is 
impossible.  Now,  this  is  the  explanation: 
When  a  man  believes  in  a  living  God,  who, 
in  all  His  plans  for  the  world,  fixes  His  at- 
tention first  and  foremost  on  the  individual, 
personal  life,  and  whose  will  and  thought  are 
directed  toward  a  great  company  of  individual 
spirits,  between  whom  He  desires  to  be  the  con- 
necting link,  he  gradually  becomes  capable,  in 
the  great  struggle  of  life,  of  exercising  love  in  the 
sense  of  the  gospel.  This  love  is  not  dependent 
on  the  hypothesis  of  natural,  human  sympathy, 
but  is  based  on  the  belief  in  the  value  of  every 
human  soul  in  God's  sight,  and  in  the  Divine 
idea  which  exists  in  every  human  soul,  though 
often  concealed  by  ugly  wrappings  and  hidden 
in  dross  or  distorted  beyond  recognition.  Thus 
it  becomes  comprehensible  how  such  love  as 
this  never  changes  into  mere  weak  good-nature. 
For  as  we  are  conscious  that  we  ought  only  to 
have  pleasure  in  ourselves,  and  sympathy  with 


GOD  AND  THE  GOOD  8i 

our  own  life  in  so  far  as  we  develop  this  idea  of 
God  within  us,  we  feel  that  our  neighbor  is  only 
worthy  of  love  in  this  sense.  Love  of  our  neigh- 
bor may  therefore  be  united  with  genuine,  pas- 
sionate anger,  for  this  love  hates  everything  that 
destroys  God's  handiwork  in  us  and  in  our 
neighbor.  Such  love  as  this  may  become  a  ham- 
mer and  chisel  to  knock  away  all  the  barren 
rocks  which  have  hidden  the  precious  metal. 

Thus  a  new  vital  element  came  into  the 
world  with  the  advent  of  the  gospel — the  will  to 
love,  powerfully  directed  toward  the  individual; 
the  will  to  love,  demanded  by  God  and  made 
possible  in  and  with  the  faith  in  God.  No  one 
has,  indeed,  recognized  this  more  clearly  than 
the  apostle  Paul  when  he  speaks  of  faith  which 
works  through  love  and  of  love  as  the  fulfilling 
of  the  law.  No  one  recognized  more  clearly 
than  he  how  the  Christian's  love  of  his  fellow- 
men  did  not  spring  from  rational  reflection,  but 
from  a  God-given  strength  and  inspiration, 
from  the  enthusiasm  of  a  heart  filled  with  faith 
in  God.  St.  Paul  named  this  wonderful  new 
power  in  life  the  Spirit  of  God.  Christians  are 
those  who  are  impelled  by  the  Spirit  of  God. 

It  is  true  that  with  all  this  we  are  only  at  the 
very  beginning  of  all  those  diflScult  and  serious 
questions  which  concern  Christian  life  on  its 


82  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

moral  side.  For  now  we  find  that  the  individual 
human  being,  especially  if  we  consider  his  real 
self  and  his  higher  life,  is  most  closely  connected 
with  the  life  of  human  society  in  its  narrower 
and  wider  circles,  in  marriage  and  the  family, 
as  one  who  pursues  a  civil  calling,  as  a  member 
of  a  profession  and  a  class,  as  a  part  of  the 
State,  the  nation,  and  mankind,  with  all  its 
eternal  efforts  toward  the  Good,  the  True,  and 
the  Beautiful.  And,  again,  these  moral  posses- 
sions of  the  community  are  most  intimately  con- 
nected with  those  efforts  and  labors  which, 
broadly  speaking,  we  regard  as  the  work  of  civi- 
lization. For  all  these  efforts  are  based  upon 
a  natural,  material  existence,  from  which  they 
derive  their  natural  powers,  and  they  wither 
whenever  the  roots  are  neglected.  In  the  gospel 
of  Jesus  and  in  primitive  Christianity  these 
questions  remain  absolutely  in  the  background. 
The  gospel  goes  straight  to  the  heart  of  things, 
concerns  itself  directly  with  the  highest  moral 
and  religious  efforts  of  human  life,  tells  us  on 
what  everything  ultimately  depends,  and  in  its 
transcendental  idealism  overleaps  almost  all  the 
means  and  conditions  by  which,  and  under 
which,  the  higher  life  of  man  works  and  devel- 
ops. It  has  only  impressed  upon  our  conscience 
one   thing  with    unmistakable   clearness — that 


GOD  AND  THE  GOOD  83 

man  does  not  reach  to  his  highest  development 
in  solitude,  but  in  society.  But  when  the  gospel 
speaks  of  human  society,  it  is  only  referring  to 
the  simplest  relations  between  man  and  man 
and  not  (speaking  generally)  to  all  the  compli- 
cated forms  and  shapes  of  a  society  in  which 
human  life  actually  moves  and  has  its  being. 
Only  a  new  seed  was  sown  which  awaits  devel- 
opment, the  first  impetus  which  demands  fur- 
ther independent  and  creative  force. 

Thus,  whilst  in  the  long  course  of  the  history 
of  Christianity,  in  opposition  to  its  original 
simplicity,  questions  of  human  life  in  society  in 
its  narrower  and  wider  relations  rose  imperiously 
and  demanded  consideration,  the  primitive,  in-' 
dividualistic  idealism  of  the  gospel  became  sub- 
ject to  sharp  tension  and  almost  unbearable 
antagonisms.  The  centre  of  gravity  of  all  moral 
effort  appears  to  be  shifted;  the  endeavor  after 
universal  good,  the  labor  on  behalf  of  the  forms 
and  laws  of  human  life  in  society,  and  for  the 
sake  of  possessions  and  things  of  value  which 
here  come  into  consideration,  seem  constantly 
to  be  of  far  more  importance  and  essential  sig- 
nificance than  the  activity  and  energy  of  love 
applied  to  the  individual.  But  as  this  work  in 
the  shaping  of  human  life  as  lived  in  society  is 
again  directly  connected  with  the  works  and 


84  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

the  acquisitions  of  material  civilization,  and 
with  the  scientific  and  technical  government  of 
the  material  world  around  us,  there  is  always 
a  danger  of  the  truly  moral  work  of  the  human 
race  being  confused  with  that  of  general  civiliza- 
tion and  becoming  identified  with  it.  And  then, 
lastly,  as  this  necessary  work  of  the  human  race 
which  is  directed  toward  the  universe  and  the 
universal  basis  of  human  life  is,  to  a  very  large 
extent,  conditioned  by  the  laws  of  nature,  and 
consequently  is  subordinate  to  other  laws,  the 
difficult  problem  arises  as  to  whether  the  moral 
demands  of  the  gospel  can  co-exist  with  this 
great  work  of  our  civilized  nations,  in  which  the 
laws  of  the  natural  struggle  for  existence  and 
questions  of  power  and  capacity  play  such  an 
important  part.  This  problem  specially  presses 
upon  us  children  of  a  later  day,  when  the  work 
of  mankind  everywhere  has  grown  so  enor- 
mously, and  has  given  rise  to  the  conflict  of 
international  rivalry,  of  international  world- 
industry;  and  when  the  national  struggles  of 
the  races,  ranks,  and  callings  absorb  all  energies 
in  such  a  way  that  the  claims  of  the  individual 
life  threaten  to  be  stifled. 

In  these  matters  there  is  for  the  Christian 
faith  no  covenant  and  no  surrender.  It  will  no 
longer  deny  the  necessity  of  all   such  work;  it 


GOD  AND  THE  GOOD  85 

will  gain  courage  joyfully  to  acknowledge  and 
affirm  it  up  to  a  certain  definite  point.  But  it 
will  never  permit  itself  to  become  weary  of  lift- 
ing the  conscience  of  the  individual  above  and 
beyond  all  the  busy  life  of  man.  It  will  have  to 
hold  up  to  the  spiritual  eye  of  mankind  the 
great  scales  for  judging  ultimate  truth  and 
reality.  It  will  not  cease  to  tell  mankind  that 
the  final  issue  does  not  depend  on  the  abstract 
questions  of  the  Good,  the  True,  and  the  Beau- 
tiful, but  on  the  individual  human  soul  in  which 
these  abstract  questions  "live  and  move  and 
have  their  being";  that  the  final  significance  of 
all  that  gigantic  work  which  we  call  civilization 
consists  in  this,  that  the  individual  and  as  many 
individuals  as  possible  in  the  varied  and  mani- 
fold labors  of  their  life,  penetrate  to  the  deepest 
reality  and  dwell  with  it  in  their  soul.  Faith 
teaches  us  to  recognize  that  the  value  of  human 
activity,  whatever  form  it  takes,  whether  it  is 
engaged  on  the  periphery  and  helps  to  fashion 
the  universal,  natural  foundation  of  our  exist- 
ence, or  whether  it  lies  nearer  the  centre  of  all 
life,  is  measured  according  as  the  worker  is 
faithful  to  Almighty  God,  who  wills  that  we 
should  find  in  work  our  higher,  true  self.  It 
tells  us  that  the  highest  value  of  our  existence 
is  not  to  be  found  in  the  moments  of  a  great 


86  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

worldly  success,  but  in  all  the  quiet  times  of  our 
life  when  soul  met  soul,  individual  existence 
touched*  individual  existence  and  strove  together 
for  the  final  reality.  It  has  the  courage  to  call 
the  great  little  and  the  little  great,  and  does  not 
allow  itself  to  be  bewildered  by  human  life, 
which  is  ever  growing  vaster  and  vaster  in  its 
work  and  its  opposing  forces;  but,  like  the 
needle  of  the  compass,  it  points  unweariedly  in 
one  definite  direction.  And  yet  in  spite  of  all 
conflict  and  opposition,  faith  is,  indeed,  indis- 
pensable to  that  universal  human  work;  it  pre- 
serves it  from  becoming  purposeless  and  from 
finally  collapsing. 

But  this  is  not  the  place  to  enter  more  fully 
into  the  separate  and  manifold  difficult  ques- 
tions and  problems  which  here  confront  us. 
We  desire  to  understand  the  Christian  belief 
in  its  unique  character,  not  to  defend  it.  And 
in  all  that  we  have  dealt  with  so  far,  we  have  not 
yet  reached  the  highest  and  final  point. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  SUMMIT 
REDEMPTION   AND    FORGIVENESS    OF    SINS 

npHE  Gospel  shows  us  moral  good,  and  our 
task  and  work  toward  it  to  be  so  far- 
reaching  and  deep  that  an  instinctive  feeling  is 
awakened  in  us  with  regard  to  it — that  of  our 
own  impotence  and  even  of  the  opposition  of 
our  sensual  self.  The  one  always  co-exists  with 
the  other — ^the  Divine  command  which  streams 
through  our  innermost  being  in  all  its  majesty, 
and  the  knowledge  that  our  earth-born  nature 
revolts  against  this  command,  and  feels  it  to  be 
in  contradiction  to  its  own  being.  This  contra- 
diction and  this  discord  are  not  to  be  argued 
away.  For  we  cannot  regard  the  evil  in  us  as 
something  that  is  not  yet  good,  as  a  necessary 
stepping-stone  to  higher  perfection,  rather  we 
feel  it  as  a  contradiction,  as  something  that 
ought  not  to  exist  under  any  circumstances;  nor 
can  we  diminish  the  majesty  of  God's  holy  will 
or  abate  His  claims.     We  are  confronted  here 

87 


88  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

with  the  insoluble  discord  of  a  lower  and  a 
higher  world,  of  will  and  ought.  The  gospel 
frees  us  from  this  lack  of  harmony  by  faith  in 
God;  its  nature  and  its  significance  reach  their 
highest  point  in  the  proclamation  of  redemption 
and  the  forgiveness  of  sins. 

Belief  in  redemption,  the  longing  for  redemp- 
tion, lie  hidden  at  the  basis  of  all  religion.  In 
all  reHgions  the  impelling  force  is  the  endeavor 
of  man  to  rise  above  his  own  small  and  condi- 
tioned world,  to  get  free  of  selfish  desires,  and 
to  find  a  surer  support  than  his  own  self  can 
offer  him.  Hence  the  phenomena  of  self-sur- 
render, of  self-sacrifice  carried  to  the  extent  of 
sacrificing  the  bodily  life,  the  child,  and  sexual 
honor,  are  frequently  to  be  found  in  the  lowest 
stage  of  religious  life. 

Thus  the  thought  of  redemption  runs  through 
the  religions  and  grows  with  their  growth.  What 
has  not  mankind,  indeed,  understood  by  re- 
demption in  the  course  of  the  history  of  religion  ? 
In  the  province  of  national  religions  people 
hoped  to  obtain  from  the  Godhead  redemption 
from  national  misfortune  and  national  misery. 
A  classic  example  of  this  is  the  national  religion 
of  Israel,  with  its  belief  in  Jehovah  the  Deliv- 
erer and  Avenger.  In  the  Jewish  religion  of  the 
Law  redemption  or  reconciliation  meant  release 


REDEMPTION  AND  FORGIVENESS     89 

from  material  and  ritualistic  impurity  which 
hindered  the  individual  from  approaching  his 
God.  When  an  Israelitish  woman  had  borne 
children  she  was  obliged  to  cleanse  herself  from 
her  impurity  by  religious  preparations  and 
acts.  Impurity  and  sin  are  still  considered  of 
almost  like  significance.  The  ideal  of  redemp- 
tion held  by  the  prophets  rises  to  a  far  higher 
level.  The  deliverance  of  the  people  of  Israel 
is  not  the  first  thing  that  they  long  for;  they 
can,  indeed,  even  bear  the  thought  of  the  de- 
cline of  their  own  nation  and  reconcile  it  with 
their  faith.  But  that  righteousness  should  con- 
quer and  triumph,  and  that  unrighteousness 
should  be  overcome — it  is  toward  this  that  their 
faith  in  redemption  is  directed.  Their  God  is 
the  Redeemer  and  the  Deliverer  because  He 
accomplishes  that. 

In  the  expiring  Greek  world  likewise  the  idea 
of  redemption  plays  an  important  part,  and  in 
the  striving  for  redemption  which  here  arises  it 
means  to  get  free  from  the  sensual  and  material 
world,  from  the  whole  sphere  of  illusion  and 
semblance,  of  dulness  and  slothfulness,  of  ugli- 
ness and  discord;  to  press  forward  to  the  eternal 
world  of  Goodness,  Beauty,  and  Truth,  to  the 
world  of  the  holy  gods  from  whom  man,  in  the 
best  part  of  his  nature,  is  descended.    Finally, 


90  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

if  we  look  toward  the  East,  toward  the  ancient 
reHgions  of  India,  we  shall  see  that  there  the 
idea  of  redemption  is  very  powerful.  It  means 
freedom  from  this  manifold,  diversified,  and 
necessarily  painful  individual  existence;  in 
Brahminism  it  is  absorption  into  the  universal, 
one.  Divine  Being;  in  Buddhism  it  is  entering 
into  the  peace  of  eternal  annihilation. 

The  Christian  belief  also  is  eminently  a  belief 
in  redemption.  It  is  not  St.  Paul  who  is  the 
originator  of  this  belief;  it  is  very  clearly  pro- 
nounced in  the  gospel.  If,  indeed,  the  cate- 
gorical imperative  predominates  in  the  latter, 
there  yet  rings  close  to  it  the  joyous,  clear  sound 
of  the  message  of  redemption.  For  the  gospel 
is  the  proclamation  of  God's  kingdom,  of  God 
who  is  near  us  in  His  kingdom.  And  if  this 
proclamation  signifies  on  the  one  hand  judg- 
ment and  repentance,  on  the  other  hand  it 
means  felicity  and  redemption.  "Blessed  are 
the  poor  in  spirit,  for  theirs  is  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  Blessed  are  they  that  hunger  and 
thirst  after  righteousness,  for  they  shall  be 
filled."  And  in  the  preaching  of  God's  king- 
dom Jesus  promises  not  merely  redemption 
from  personal  misery  and  from  the  misery  of 
national  life;  His  redemption  stretches  far  be- 
yond this.    A  new  and  higher  time  is  to  come, 


REDEMPTION  AND  FORGIVENESS     91 

and  in  it  and  with  it  a  new  and  higher  life;  and 
this  life  has  so  Httle  to  do  with  the  other,  is  so 
little  commensurable  with  it,  that  in  losing  the 
one  man  finds  the  other.  And  this  has  ever 
been  the  idea  throughout  the  history  of  the 
Christian  religion.  Wherever  its  leaders,  be  it 
St.  Paul,  or  St.  Augustine,  or  Luther,  or  Schlei- 
ermacher,  have  grasped  the  Christian  faith  in 
its  fullest  significance  it  has  always  been  re- 
vealed to  them  as  belief  in  redemption. 

If  we  desire  to  understand  the  nature  of  the 
Christian  belief  with  regard  to  redemption,  we 
may  say  as  follows:  Redemption  in  the  sense  of 
the  gospel  means  to  get  free  and  to  escape  from 
the  natural,  sensually  inclined  self  that  sees  in 
itself  the  object  of  its  life  and  strivings.  To  be 
redeemed  means  to  be  caught  up  by  the  power 
of  God;  redemption  signifies  the  experience  by 
which  the  /  is  removed  from  the  centre  of  the 
individual's  contemplation  of  the  world  and  is 
forced  to  revolve  with  its  whole  life  round  God. 
Redemption  no  longer  means  to  us  freedom 
from  this  or  that  particular  thing  in  regard  to 
this  or  that  external  matter,  but  we  feel  that  it 
touches  the  very  roots  of  our  existence.  For  all 
the  oppression,  anguish,  and  misery  of  life  arise 
from  this,  that  our  ego  in  all  the  experiences  of 
its  life  looks  upon  itself  in  its  isolation  and  not 


92  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

on  the  will  of  the  almighty  God  which  is  there- 
by revealed;  and  all  these  miseries  vanish  as 
soon  as  this  presumptuous  standpoint  is  aban- 
doned and  exchanged  for  the  contrary  one. 
Redemption  in  the  Christian  sense  of  the  word 
does  not  mean,  indeed,  surrender  to  abstract 
powers  and  laws,  be  it  the  power  of  righteous- 
ness and  holiness  or  the  ideals  of  the  Good,  the 
True,  and  the  Beautiful,  but  surrender  to  the 
personal,  almighty  God.  And  finally  it  means, 
not  a  casting  away  and  contempt  of  life,  but 
elevation  to  a  higher  life.  We  surrender  to  God 
our  being,  which  until  then  had  desired  to  be 
self-sufficing  and  to  revolve  on  its  own  axis, 
in  order  to  receive  this  self  from  Him  again, 
consecrated  and  ennobled.  We  no  longer 
arrange  the  course  of  our  life  in  accordance 
with  our  own  will,  but  we  accept  the  law 
of  our  Hfe  from  His  hand;  yet  at  the  same 
time  we  very  soon  learn  to  recognize  this  law 
as  the  expression  of  our  own  higher  being 
and  life. 

Thus  our  faith  in  God  is  a  very  profound 
experience,  and  wherever  it  is  so  felt  it  is  bound 
up  with  deep  sufferings.  To  accept  God,  to 
come  to  Him,  always  means  to  give  up  part  of 
our  being.  We  do  not  attain  to  God  in  so 
simple  a  way  that  we  merely  have  to  bethink  us 


REDEMPTION  AND  FORGIVENESS     93 

of  the  primal  basis  of  our  nature  and  find  Him 
there.  But  God  affects  us  as  a  harsh  necessity, 
as  a  strong  compulsion,  which  we  resist,  as  the 
sculptor's  hammer  which  strikes  the  hard  stone. 
Something  within  us — often  a  great  deal — must 
be  broken  and  destroyed,  something  must  be 
utterly  cast  away  if  the  new  life  is  to  arise.  All 
true  faith  is  conversion,  though  not  of  such 
a  kind  that  we  experience  it  in  a  flash,  objec- 
tively and  comprehensibly  to  the  senses.  But 
our  religious  feeling  develops  through  the 
struggle  which,  spread  over  a  long  period  of 
time,  sometimes  assumes  gentler,  sometimes 
more  violent  forms;  which  sometimes  is  most 
active,  sometimes  quiescent,  but  yet  always  ex- 
ists. It  is  also  said  of  our  lives,  but  in  a  broader 
sense,  "Whosoever  would  save  his  life  shall 
lose  it." 

In  and  with  this  redemption  which  is  accom- 
plished in  us  when  we  encounter  the  reality  of 
God  in  our  life,  our  powers  for  good  in  the 
gospel  sense  of  the  word  are  now  freed.  For 
the  main  obstacle  which  arises  within  us  against 
the  claim  of  loving  our  neighbor  is  our  sensual 
egoism,  the  efforts  of  the  ego  to  receive  the  laws 
of  life  from  its  own  material,  isolated  being 
alone.  But  if  this  egoistic  passion  of  man  is  en- 
tirely annihilated  in  the  presence  of  God's  ma- 


94  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

jestic  reality,  if  we  are  cast  out  from  the  centre 
of  our  own  contemplation,  and  God  is  placed 
there,  the  road  is  now  open  for  moral  goodness. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  in  faith  we  compre- 
hend God  as  the  common  bond  which  binds 
spirits  together,  as  the  almighty  will  who  has 
appointed  to  each  the  measure  and  the  goal  of 
his  life,  and  unceasingly  acts  so  that  those  who 
recognize  in  His  will  the  law  of  their  life  live  to- 
gether in  harmony,  whilst  wherever  this  does 
not  happen  there  is  meaningless  friction  and 
waste  of  force. 

Thus  our  faith  in  God  brings  a  deep  dishar- 
mony into  our  life,  but  at  the  same  time  it  frees 
us  from  it.  Whenever  faith  enters  a  human  soul 
it  causes  the  lower,  sensual  nature  to  rise  in  re- 
volt, and  at  the  same  time  it  gives  the  power  to 
overcome  this  opposition. 

In  truth,  we  may  go  farther  and  assert  that  in 
this  belief  in  redemption  is  rooted,  not  merely 
the  power  for  good,  but  the  permanency  of  our 
whole,  higher,  spiritual  life.  For  is  not  this 
spiritual  life  of  ours  directed  toward,  and  estab- 
lished upon,  the  redemption  of  our  sensual, 
lower  being  and  its  release  from  sensual  fetters  ? 
In  all  the  inquiries  and  investigations  concern- 
ing truth,  when,  transcending  purely  empirical 
knowledge,  we  declare  this  to  be  fictitious  and 


REDEMPTION  AND  FORGIVENESS     95 

that  fact,  this  dream  and  illusion  and  that 
reality,  we  are  in  truth  freeing  our  ego  from  the 
conditions  and  the  barriers  of  sensual  experi- 
ence. We  are  proceeding  with  our  own  laws  of 
thought,  and  though  we  have  gained  these 
through  experience,  yet  with  regard  to  this  ex- 
perience we  estimate  it  by  the  laws  we  have 
gained,  and  freeing  ourselves  from  illusion,  we 
press  forward,  step  by  step,  to  the  deeper  reality. 
When  we  consider  existence  all  around  us  with 
a  receptive  mind  for  the  Beautiful,  the  Harmo- 
nious, and  the  Sublime,  we  control  and  drive 
back  our  directly  sensual  impressions  of  natural 
pleasure  and  displeasure,  and  free  ourselves 
from  sensual  passions.  And  stepping  out  of  the 
isolation  of  our  own  self,  we  stretch  our  grop- 
ing, fumbling  hands  toward  a  Being  related  to 
us  and  comprehensible  to  us,  who  reveals  Him- 
self in  the  nature  around  us.  And  finally,  when 
in  the  work  of  our  life  we  evolve  a  moral  person- 
ality— a  true  self — then,  to  a  certain  extent,  we 
free  ourselves  from  the  conditions  of  the  exter- 
nal world,  and  we  learn  gradually  to  employ 
everything  that  comes  to  us  from  without  as 
stones  and  material  for  the  building  of  our  own 
life  which  we  erect  from  within  outward,  ac- 
cording to  its  own  laws,  however  imperfect  they 
may  still  be.     We  feel  that  we  are  no  longer 


96  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

driven  aimlessly  hither  and  thither  by  events 
and  occurrences,  but  are  strengthened  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  our  ov^n  freedom. 

Thus  all  our  higher,  spiritual  striving  aims  at 
redemption  and  release,  but  it  threatens,  indeed, 
to  break  down  without  support  if  it  does  not 
obtain  its  foundation  in  faith.  Carking  doubts 
cling  around  on  all  sides.  Is  it  really  a  fact  that 
our  search  for  truth  brings  us  nearer  to  the 
reality,  that  our  knowledge  and  understanding 
are  equal  to  this  reality .?  Or  does  not  our 
knowledge  and  understanding  lead  us  farther 
away  from  it  ^  All  questions  of  knowledge  end 
in  a  final  question  which  knowledge  itself  cannot 
decide.  And  all  that  we  feel  in  the  enjoyment 
of  the  Beautiful  and  the  Sublime — is  all  that, 
perhaps,  but  an  illusion,  3.  fata  morgana^  a  mere 
trick  of  the  imagination,  and  not  the  colored 
reflection  of  a  higher  reality  which  is  full  of 
promise .?  And  when  we  think  to  shape  our 
life  freely  from  within  outward,  is  that  not  only 
miserable  deception .?  Are  we,  perhaps,  only 
free  as  a  bird  that  is  fastened  to  a  long  string, 
and  thinks  itself  free  for  a  while  as  it  flies  about 
in  the  air,  until  it  becomes  all  the  more  bitterly 
conscious  of  its  delusion  ?  What  are  we  who 
desire  to  penetrate,  master,  and  control  the 
universe  ?    Are  we  not  beings  limited  in  all  the 


REDEMPTION  AND  FORGIVENESS     97 

fibres  of  our  existence,  and,  moreover,  strangely 
powerless  in  our  strivings  and  our  willing  ? 

It  is  only  faith  which  gives  the  true  basis  to 
all  our  higher,  spiritual  striving;  for  it  tells  us 
that  this  struggle  is  not  merely  an  emanation  of 
arbitrary  despotism,  by  which  the  little  and 
circumscribed  will  opposes  an  antagonistic  en- 
vironment which  would  necessarily  crush  it. 
It  tells  us  that  all  is  in  obedience  to  the  Divine 
Will,  a  Divine  obligation  that  is  laid  upon  our 
being,  which  we,  at  the  same  time,  perceive  to 
be  the  law  of  our  own  being.  It  is  faith  which 
gives  us  the  courage  and  the  strength  to  illumine 
with  the  torch  of  our  knowledge  the  hidden 
corners  of  existence.  For  it  is  our  God's  world 
which  we  acknowledge,  and  the  laws  of  our 
thinking  are  given  by  Him.  Faith  gives  us  the 
courage  and  the  strength  rightly  to  rejoice  in 
the  Beautiful,  to  stand  reverently  before  the 
Sublime,  the  Awful,  and  the  Terrible — for  it  is 
God's  nature  which  reveals  itself  in  all  things — 
and  to  build  up  our  life  in  accordance  with  the 
law  of  inward  freedom — for  it  is  God  who  gives 
it  us.  Or  let  us  once  more  consider  it  from  the 
other  point  of  view;  in  faith  we  experience,  with 
concentrated  strength,  the  fact  that  we  are  freed 
from  our  egoistic,  sensual  self  which  stands  in 
isolation.    No  power  and  might  in  the  world  are 


98  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

strong  enough  to  accomplish  this  release.  But 
when  God  frees  us,  then  are  we  free  indeed. 
Thus,  then,  faith  works  as  a  redeeming  and 
releasing  power  in  its  widest  application,  on  all 
our  higher  life  and  spiritual  striving.  In  our 
innermost  soul,  indeed,  we  experience  its  power 
in  the  direct  uplifting  of  the  soul  to  God  and  in 
the  unlocking  and  freeing  of  the  will  to  do 
good,  in  the  strength  to  love,  in  surrender  to  the 
good  and  Divine  Will  which  is  directed  toward 
a  community  of  spirits. 

But  now  we  are  further  confronted  with  the 
experience  that  this  striving  to  rise  from  the 
lower  sensual  life  to  the  higher  life  willed  by 
God,  or  indeed  this  ascent  through  Divine 
strength,  is  not  straightway  accomplished  in  us, 
but  only  amid  constant  opposition  and  con- 
tinual checks  which  proceed  from  our  lower 
nature;  there  is  defeat  and  victory,  falling  and 
rising.  We  are  here  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  absolutely  irrational  fact  of  sin  and  evil. 
For  however  much,  indeed,  the  reflective  under- 
standing might  force  us  to  acknowledge  that, 
because  everything  is  to  be  traced  back  to  God, 
therefore  what  we  call  sin  is  somehow  condi- 
tioned by  Him,  yet  our  conscience  will  always 
make  us  responsible  for  our  sin.    But  here  it  is 


REDEMPTION  AND  FORGIVENESS     99 

not  a  matter  for  us  of  the  theoretical  solution  of 
these  final  questions,  but  of  the  way  out  of  this 
misery,  which  our  faith  procures  for  us.  And 
so  we  say,  finally,  that  our  faith  is  a  faith  of  the 
forgiveness  of  sins,  and  finds  therein  its  com- 
pletion and  consummation.  Everything  that 
we  call  sin  is  an  act  against  our  higher  and 
God-given  destiny,  is,  therefore,  a  wrong  done 
to  God  and  His  holy  will,  is  an  interruption  of 
our  personal  relation  to  God.  But  this  interrup- 
tion must  be  put  an  end  to,  and  this  is  accom- 
plished by  a  spontaneous  and  inscrutable  act  of 
Divine  love,  by  which  He  forgives  sin. 

The  gospel  of  Jesus — and  here  we  have  the 
highest  and  greatest  thing  in  it — makes  us  cer- 
tain and  secure  of  a  God  who  forgives  sins.  In 
His  most  beautiful  parables  Jesus  proclaimed 
the  God  who,  out  of  the  fulness  of  His  loving- 
kindness,  in  fatherly  love,  pardons  and  forgives 
sins.  In  the  prayer  which  He  taught  His  dis- 
ciples to  pray  the  requests  for  the  forgiveness  of 
sins  and  for  redemption  are  at  the  end,  the 
climax.  But  Jesus  did  not  merely  teach  the 
forgiveness  of  sins;  He  poured  it  forth  upon  the 
world.  Only  thus  coiild  the  belief  become  liv- 
ing. For  it  is  a  belief  that  is  beyond  all  calcu- 
lation. Our  reflective  understanding  does  not 
tell  us  that  God  forgives  sins,  rather  it  tells  us 


100  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

that  God  repels  sinful  man.  It  shows  us 
Almighty  God  resting  on  Himself,  on  the  hid- 
den depths  of  His  own  being,  who  in  no  wise 
needs  us,  who  offers  no  reason  why  He  should 
not  destroy  the  vessels  of  His  almighty  power 
which  do  not  correspond  to  His  will.  A  Divine 
power  was  required  to  fetch  down  the  fire  of 
Divine  grace  from  heaven;  and  from  Jesus 
there  streamed  forth  the  certainty  of  the  for- 
giveness of  sin.  He  comprehended  the  Divine 
grace  revealed  in  the  forgiveness  of  sins  in  its 
perfect  absoluteness  and  unconditionalness.  He 
possessed  the  courage  to  proclaim,  however 
strong  His  conviction  was  of  the  corruption  of 
His  race  and  of  the  human  nature  around  him, 
that  God  forgives  sins  without  conditions  wher- 
ever the  souls  of  men  yearn  for  the  Divine  for- 
giveness of  sins  in  vital  need  and  with  genuine 
longings.  And  finally.  He  proclaimed  the  for- 
giveness of  sin  as  a  free,  personal  act  of  the 
living  God,  without  any  mediation  whatever 
through  deeds,  things,  and  outward  acts. 

He  did  not  only  teach  all  this,  but  He  acted 
it.  And  wherever  there  still  existed  one  last 
spark  of  longing  in  a  human  heart,  one  last 
faint  desire  for  communion  with  the  living  God, 
He  cast  the  full  beam  of  Divine  grace  into  the 
human    soul,    and    performed    the    miracle    of 


REDEMPTION  AND  FORGIVENESS    loi 

kindling  new  life  in  a  dead  man.  He  made 
possible  the  apparently  impossible.  Thus  a 
stream  of  certainty  concerning  the  forgiveness 
of  sins  has  flowed  into  our  world  through  Him, 
and  continues  to  exercise  an  influence  in  a 
thousand  links  and  chains  through  the  com- 
munion of  His  Spirit. 

And  we  must  not  hesitate  to  acknowledge 
that  this  is  the  highest  and  final  point  in  our 
faith  in  God  when  we  can  accept  and  conceive 
God  as  the  God  who  forgives  sins.  We  know 
that  we  do  not  keep  and  preserve  this  belief  as 
the  result  of  our  rational  reflection  but  it  is 
borne  in  upon  us  by  the  power  of  the  Spirit 
which  is  living  in  the  communion  of  our  faith. 
We  do  not  desire,  thereby,  to  over-emphasize 
and  exaggerate  the  belief  in  the  forgiveness  of 
sins.  In  the  history  of  Christianity  this  procla- 
mation often  assumes  a  form  which  threatens 
to  check  the  spirit  and  the  activity  of  the  new 
life  which  it  should  kindle.  There  are  Chris- 
tians to  whom  the  thought  of  their  sinful- 
ness appears  to  have  become  everything;  from 
whom  we  might  get  the  impression  that  being 
a  Christian  consists  in  considering  oneself  a 
wicked  person.  There  are  Christian  circles 
which  are  menaced  with  the  danger  that  the 
avowal  of  sinfulness  threatens  to  become  no 


102  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

longer  an  experience,  but  a  doctrine,  a  promi- 
nent dogma;  especially  is  this  the  case  when  this 
avowal  is  united  with  untenable  speculations 
concerning  the  nature  and  origin  of  sin.  There 
is  in  Christian  life  a  certain  frame  of  mind  in 
which  people  are  so  fascinated  with  the  thoughts 
of  sin  that  they  forget  there  is  a  higher  goal  in 
Christian  life  than  forgiveness  of  sins — com- 
munion with  God  and  eternal  life. 

In  opposition  to  these  ideas,  we  desire  to  hold 
firmly  to  this,  that  religion,  faith,  is  primarily 
a  joyful  advance  and  progress.  To  believe  is 
to  find  God,  and  in  Him  rest.  Belief  signifies 
certainty,  joy,  a  feeling  of  being  at  home.  It  is 
thus  that  the  religious  life  awakens  in  the  souls 
of  children  if  they  are  left  undisturbed  by  any 
dogmatically  introduced  teaching.  Only  grad- 
ually do  we  become  conscious  of  the  other  and 
darker  side  of  religious  life.  But  the  former 
aspect  dwells  with  us.  To  believe  means  to 
feel  oneself  placed  before  the  good  and  holy 
will  of  God,  and  therewith  before  the  greatest 
task  of  our  life:  "Ye  therefore  shall  be  perfect, 
as  your  heavenly  Father  is  perfect.''  That  is  the 
first  and  the  last  word,  and  it  must  never  be 
forgotten. 

But  it  is,  indeed,  just  when  we  do  this,  when 
we  place  our  soul  in  the  presence  of  the  holy 


REDEMPTION  AND  FORGIVENESS    103 

God  and  His  good-will,  that  there  arises  in  us 
from  our  experience  the  feeling  of  our  insuf- 
ficient strength,  of  our  constant  falling  short  of 
the  goal  appointed  for  us.  Then,  trembling 
and  stammering,  we  stand  before  the  Holy 
One,  and  know  that  nothing  can  release  us 
from  our  misery  but  belief  in  the  forgiveness  of 
sins.  And  we  know,  further,  that  we  do  not 
only  need  forgiveness  of  sins  for  this  or  that 
particular  case;  an  absolutely  impassable  abyss 
separates  us  from  the  holy,  almighty  God.  For 
all  our  moral  strivings  and  the  work  of  our  life 
are,  and  remain,  at  best,  imperfect  and  frag- 
mentary. But  God  wills  completion  and  per- 
fection. From  out  of  this  misery  of  our  life 
faith  alone  rescues  us,  which  here  again  breaks 
in  with  its  "and  yet,"  and  tells  us  that  God 
wants  us  as  we  are,  if  we  will  only  let  ourselves 
be  influenced  by  His  elevating  power,  by  His 
mercy,  which  covers  our  imperfections.  Paul 
called  this  experience  and  this  certainty,  which 
did  not  refer  to  a  particular  case  but  to  human 
life  generally,  justification.  Let  us  put  on  one 
side,  for  the  moment,  the  word  which  Paul 
coined,  and  the  speculations  which,  to  Paul, 
were  bound  up  in  the  doctrine  of  justification, 
especially  those  concerning  the  reconciliatory 
means  of  justification — Christ's  blood  or  Christ's 


104  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

death.  It  is  experience  itself  that  is  indispen- 
sable to  the  Christian  faith.  The  beUever  needs 
the  universal  certainty  that  in  spite  of  all  oppo- 
sition and  hindrances  God  belongs  to  him  and 
he  to  God;  and  he  attains  this  when  he  joins 
the  stream  of  religious  certainty  which  went 
forth  from  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  flows  along 
with  it. 

Now,  all  this  means  no  weakness  of  our  life's 
energy,  and  no  yielding  to  a  weary  and  ex- 
hausted frame  of  mind,  but  a  deeper,  more 
earnest,  and  true  comprehension  of  reality;  and 
truth  and  reality  can  never  crush  and  paralyze 
strength,  but  only  exalt  it.  In  order  to  perceive 
this  let  us  once  more  compare  Christianity 
and  the  ancient  philosophy  which,  together 
with  Christianity,  ruled  the  earlier  world.  How 
closely,  in  many  ways,  this  spiritual  power, 
represented  by  the  names  of  Socrates,  Plato, 
and  the  Stoics  approaches  Christianity;  how 
much  on  either  side  there  is  that  is  closely  con- 
nected! But  on  this  one  point  the  basic  diflFer- 
ence  is  seen.  The  characteristic  of  the  Greek 
classical  world  which  finds  here  its  highest  ex- 
pression is  absolute  self-confidence  and  trust  in 
the  goodness  of  Nature.  Let  us  imagine  a  Stoic 
confronted  with  the  Lord's  Prayer — ^he  would 
have  been  able  to  join  in  joyfully  with  the  first 


REDEMPTION  AND  FORGIVENESS    105 

half  of  it,  but  when  he  came  to  the  request  for 
the  forgiveness  of  sins  he  would  have  shut  his 
lips  tightly,  and  his  sympathies  would  have 
vanished.  And  even  when,  in  later  times,  trust 
in  the  goodness  of  this  world  and  in  a  recogniz- 
able meaning  of  the  universe  disappeared  more 
and  more,  the  endeavor  was  still  directed  then, 
as  before,  toward  upholding  one  thing  in  this 
mysterious,  impenetrable  and  cold  world — con- 
fidence in  one's  own  ego^  the  stoical  attitude. 

Then  there  arose  in  this  world,  which  was 
profoundly  ill  at  ease  and  did  not  know  how  to 
rid  itself  of  the  evils  of  life,  a  new  and  conquer- 
ing power.  It  conquered  because  it  had  under- 
stood more  profoundly  truth  and  reality.  And 
it  announced  that  it  was  the  highest  thing  for 
man  to  abandon  this  inflexible  and  unyielding 
attitude,  and  to  learn  one  thing — the  surrender 
of  his  own  self,  surrender  as  it  was  understood  in 
its  deepest  and  most  vital  sense,  in  the  experi- 
ence of  redemption  and  forgiveness  of  sins 
(justification).  The  Christian  belief  brought 
into  the  world  that  was  growing  old  the  great 
mystery  of  death  and  re-birth,  and  with  this 
mystery  arose  victorious  the  new  redeeming  life. 

Redemption  and  the  forgiveness  of  sins — 
both,  finally,  are  most  closely  connected.  If  in 
redemption  we  experience,  primarily,  the  power 


io6  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

which  frees  from  sin,  and  releases  the  will 
toward  the  good,  in  the  forgiveness  of  sins  or 
reconciliation  we  lose  the  oppressive  feeling  of 
moral  guilt  which  paralyzes  our  powers.  In  the 
Indian  religion  the  deepest  longing  for  redemp- 
tion was  summed  up  in  the  cry  of  "get  rid  of 
life";  in  Christianity  it  was  "get  rid  of  sin  and 
get  rid  of  guilt  and  press  forward  to  a  higher 
life/'  And  thus,  on  this  final  point,  the  exalted 
spiritual  character  of  our  faith  in  God  comes 
once  more  prominently  forward.  Its  posses- 
sions lie  beyond  the  maintenance  or  the  sur- 
render of  this  natural  life. 


CHAPTER  VII 

ETERNAL   HOPE 

^T^HUS  our  faith  in  God  is  entirely  based  on 
"^  personality.  We  believe  in  the  Almighty 
God,  who  surrounds  us  with  the  profundity  of 
His  nature  and  His  works,  as  the  God  of  our 
life,  as  our  heavenly  Father,  who  keeps  His 
glance  directed  toward  the  individual,  personal, 
spiritual  life  of  man,  and  surrounds  it  with  His 
providence.  We  believe  in  the  God  whose 
world-design  finds  its  goal  in  a  kingdom  of 
spirits,  the  connecting  link  of  all  our  higher 
spiritual  fellowship.  We  find  this  God  when 
we  free  ourselves  from  our  lower,  sensual  being 
and  selfish  existence,  and  discover  in  His 
thoughts  which  He  communicates  to  us  the  law 
of  our  higher  life.  Or,  better,  we  find  Him  in 
letting  Him  find  us,  when  we  experience  His 
redeeming  power  and  His  grace  which  releases 
us  from  sin.  And  what  we  experience  is  the 
freeing  of  the  higher  personal  life,  and  what  we 
are  freed  from  is  the  misery  of  personal  insuf- 
ficiency and  guilt. 

107 


io8  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

This  Christian  belief  is  completed  in  Hope. 
But  Hope  has  as  its  contents  the  eternal  value 
and  import  of  this  higher  personal  life.  And 
as  this  depends,  finally,  on  the  individual  and  is 
nowhere  present  but  in  the  ego  and  the  many 
single  individualities  which  experience  this 
higher  life,  the  Christian  hope  rises  boldly  to  the 
belief  in  the  eternal  value  and  import  of  the 
individual  life,  so  far  as  this  has  emerged  from 
a  sensual  state  to  a  higher  existence  and  has 
found  in  God  the  law  of  its  being. 

It  must  be  carefully  noted  that  this  hope  is 
the  summit  of  the  whole  building,  and  not  its 
foundation.  And  we  must  not  take  it  for 
granted  that  those  who  in  an  age  so  disinclined 
for  this  thought  cannot  assent  to  this  hope  are, 
therefore,  without  the  foundations  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  No  demand  and  no  law  must  be 
laid  down  here.  Hope  is  never  to  be  demanded. 
It  resembles  the  hope  of  the  blossoming  of 
plants  whose  development  is  patiently  awaited. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  must  also  be  said  that 
in  the  long  course  of  the  history  of  Christianity 
the  hope  of  eternal  life  has  always  been  united 
with  a  living  and  strong  faith.  It  is  true  that 
in  the  process  of  the  development  of  the  Chris- 
tian idea  of  the  Cosmos  all  those  varied  and 
fantastic  expectations  of  a  more  or  less  immi- 


ETERNAL  HOPE  109 

nent  end  of  the  world — of  one  great  Judgment 
Day,  of  the  bursting  open  of  the  graves  at  the 
trumpet  call,  of  the  bodily  resurrection  of  the 
dead,  and  the  coming  of  the  Judge  of  all  the 
world — ^have  more  and  more  disappeared,  or,  at 
least,  have  been  removed  to  the  periphery  of  our 
religious  life.  But  the  hope  of  the  eternal  life 
of  human  personality  pervaded  by  God's  Spirit 
has  been  preserved  throughout  the  whole  course 
of  the  history  of  Christianity.  It  has  also  been 
preserved  by  the  leaders  on  whom  the  founda- 
tions of  our  modern  intellectual  life  rest.  Kant's 
rational  belief  in  God  which  rested  on  a  dualistic 
basis,  and  Goethe's  view  of  the  world,  compre- 
hending nature  and  spirit  as  far  as  possible  as 
one,  yet  ending  in  theism,  meet  here. 

This  hope  of  Christian  life  stands,  indeed,  on 
a  height  not  to  be  reached  by  rational  proof;  it 
is  deep  rooted  in  faith  and  is  only  attainable 
through  it;  but  through  it  it  is  attainable,  and 
indeed  faith  is  indispensable  for  its  perfection 
and  consummation.  Christian  faith  in  God, 
whenever  it  was  active  and  living,  has  always 
and  at  all  times  been  a  matter  of  Thou  and  /, 
however  small  and  insignificant  the  human  / 
may  appear  in  contrast  with  Almighty  God. 
The  goal  of  a  perfect,  mystically  quietistic  ab- 
sorption in  God  has  always  remained  essentially 


no  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

foreign  to  our  faith.  But  whoever  has  found 
God  after  the  manner  of  our  faith  has  had  an 
experience  which  lends  eternal  value  and  sig- 
nificance to  our  life  here  below.  From  eternity 
our  destiny  was  pre-ordained  in  God's  all-com- 
prehensive plan,  and  we  were  appointed  to  our 
place;  an  eternity  depends  upon  how  we  fulfil 
our  life  at  the  place  assigned  to  us.  Everything 
that  meets  us  in  our  transitory  life  we  learn  to 
focus  through  the  power  of  faith,  to  harmonize 
into  a  whole  which  has  still  much  that  is  incom- 
plete and  imperfect,  but  which  yet  is  and  must 
be  essentially  an  affirmation  of  the  thought 
implanted  in  us  by  God.  And  whenever  our 
faith  is  genuine  we  are  conscious  in  everything 
of  a  strength  which  nothing  in  the  world  can 
overpower,  a  joy  and  quiet  composure  which 
can  never  be  taken  away  from  us.  But  in  every 
one  who  has  experienced  this  truly  there  arises 
the  joyous  presage  of  the  eternal  character  of 
this  our  life;  he  perceives  in  himself  a  strength 
independent  of  all  external  events. 

It  is  not,  however,  only  the  strength  and  the 
power,  the  confidence  and  the  certainty  stream- 
ing forth  from  our  belief  in  God,  but  the  un- 
solved questions  (which,  indeed,  the  believer 
puts  on  one  side)  and  the  troublous  and  painful 
experiences  with  which  he  is  burdened  that  all 


ETERNAL  HOPE  in 

point  to  the  final  solution  offered  to  us  by 
Christian  hope. 

Our  faith  bears  us  upward  and  onward.  We 
are  conscious  of  this  in  the  favored  hours  of  our 
life  when  there  are,  apparently,  no  hindrances 
and  obstacles,  when  our  journeying  resembles 
a  vigorous  ascent,  when  we  feel  ourselves  up- 
lifted by  God's  strength  as  on  the  wings  of  an 
eagle.  But  side  by  side  with  these  there  are 
hours  of  weariness  and  failure,  when  cast,  faint- 
ing, from  the  heights,  we  lie  on  the  ground  with 
broken  wings.  Faith  reveals  to  us  the  joyous 
certainty  that  we,  placed  under  a  higher  guid- 
ance, are  carrying  out  in  our  life  a  plan  which 
was  thought  out  for  us  by  a  higher  power;  and 
when  we  discover  this  our  soul  is  filled  with  re- 
joicing, as  is  the  miner's  when  he  discovers 
a  precious  silver  vein  in  the  rock.  But  at  the 
same  time  our  hearts  are  filled  with  sorrow  and 
consternation.  For  when  our  life's  destiny  is 
gradually  seen  to  be  nobler  we  perceive  how 
many  mistakes  we  have  made,  how  much  time 
we  have  lost,  and  how  many  misspent  hours 
and  wasted  opportunities  burden  our  life. 

But  our  hope  tells  us  that  a  time  shall  come 
when  perfect  aspiration  shall  inspire  our  life, 
when  life  shall  fly  upward  as  the  arrow  from 
the  tensely   drawn   bow;    a   time   shall   come 


112  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

when  our  life  shall  be  no  more  a  continual  seek- 
ing, an  alternate  losing  and  picking  up  again  of 
threads.  But  its  path  shall  lie  quite  clear  before 
our  eyes,  and  our  glance  will  gaze  freely  over 
the  furthest  distance. 

Through  faith  we  have  found  God  in  the 
very  centre  of  the  universe.  But  yet  how  mys- 
terious and  hidden  does  He  remain  to  us  in  His 
workings  and  in  His  nature!  Through  faith  we 
build,  indeed,  strong  pillars  to  which  we  cling, 
but  round  about  us  surge  the  problems  of  life. 
We  think  of  all  the  unsolved  questions  in  the 
lot  of  the  individual  and  the  nations  which  bur- 
den our  life;  we  think  of  all  those  whom  death 
has  early  snatched  away  before  they  had  at- 
tained to  a  full  and  true  life,  of  those  who  are 
plunged  in  the  darkness  of  incurable  illnesses 
and  of  madness;  we  think  of  the  gloomy  con- 
dition of  a  great  portion  of  the  human  race  on 
the  lowest  stage  of  existence,  of  the  violent 
destruction  of  civilized  nations. 

Hope  tells  us  that  what  we  see  here  are  un- 
finished lines  which  await  continuation,  broken 
fragments  which  await  completion.  But  we  are 
to  experience  this  completion.  Now  our  God 
when  we  see  Him  in  His  working  hides  Himself 
behind  dark  clouds  of  mystery;  but  we  shall 
see  Him  face  to  face. 


ETERNAL  HOPE  113 

Our  faith  points  to  the  great  aim  of  spiritual 
communion  and  its  perfection.  Here,  also,  we 
are  confronted  with  difficult  questions  and  rid- 
dles. We  asked  earlier:  Is  progress  really  dis- 
cernible in  the  history  of  mankind  in  the  sense 
of  getting  nearer  to  the  attainment  of  God's 
kingdom  on  earth  ?  Will  the  nations  some  day 
live  together  in  harmony  ?  Will  war  cease  ? 
And  even  if  that  is  so  will  there  be  a  cessation  or 
an  alleviation  of  the  less  violent  yet  very  intense 
antagonisms  ?  Will  there  be  a  time  when  the 
merciless  war  of  competition  in  international 
industry  will  cease,  when  the  weak  will  no 
longer  be  oppressed  and  down-trodden  by  the 
strong,  and  class  conflicts  and  class  rivalry  will 
pass  away  ?  Will  the  miseries  of  society  ever 
be  even  partially  alleviated  ?  When  the  struggle 
for  life  is  made  lighter  in  the  relatively  higher 
classes  will  not  misery  and  poverty  descend  to 
those  of  a  lower  stratum  and  assert  their  exist- 
ence, inevitably  and  without  possibility  of  ex- 
tinction .?  Is  there  a  real  contact  and  com- 
munion of  the  nations  in  the  deepest  matters  of 
spiritual  life,  in  the  most  important  things  at 
least — in  faith,  in  religion  }  Even  if  we  believed 
in  the  victory  of  Christianity  over  the  opposing 
religions,  will  not  the  victorious  Christian  re- 
ligion consist  of  a  whole  series  of  firmly  knit 


114  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

organizations,  in  which  an  inward  and  mutual 
understanding  is  made  extremely  difficult  ? 
With  the  wealth  of  life  we  see  how  its  tasks, 
riddles,  and  problems  increase.  We  shall  never 
master  this  sphinx!  Our  works  and  our  efforts 
throughout  the  ages  are  fragmentary  and  im- 
perfect. 

And  when  we  look  at  our  own  personal  social 
existence,  what  hidden  faults  and  imperfections 
we  perceive!  We  run  and  hurry  past  one  an- 
other, and  do  not  know  one  another — "ships 
that  pass  in  the  night."  Even  when  we  think 
we  are  most  closely  in  touch  and  in  harmony 
with  those  who  are  dear  to  us,  how  often  little 
events  of  our  daily  life  make  it  clear  that  in 
great  stretches  of  our  individual  life  we  were 
solitary  and  uncomprehended.  The  confused 
lines  of  our  life  are  often  so  indistinct  and 
vague  to  us  ourselves;  how,  then,  should  we 
make  them  clear  to  another .? 

Our  Christian  hope  speaks  to  us  of  a  higher 
existence  in  which  spirits  free  from  earthly 
dross  will  be  visible  to  one  another,  will  mingle 
in  an  inconceivably  higher  harmony,  and  will 
lead  their  life  together  on  a  higher  plane;  when 
the  common  life  of  man  will  have  lost  its  fears 
and  pains  and  problems,  and  will  only  betoken 
united  effort  and  a  higher  flight  for  the  indi- 


ETERNAL  HOPE  115 

vidual,  and  God's  will  is  the  visible  bond  be- 
tween man  and  man. 

Yet,  withal,  Christian  hope  is  no  weak, 
emotional,  and  sentimental  belief.  Material- 
istic personal  desire  must  be  entirely  cast  on  one 
side;  the  hope  of  seeing  again  our  beloved  dead 
— a  feeling  so  often  predominant  in  faith — can 
only  exist  as  a  part  of  the  whole  belief.  There 
is  something  austere  and  mighty  about  the  hope 
of  our  faith.  All  material  coverings  must  fall 
away;  it  will  be,  indeed,  a  higher  life  for  which 
we  hope.  We  can  only  faintly  divine  it.  In  this 
higher  life  will  there  be  a  continuity  of  self-con- 
sciousness ?  We  can  only  suggest  an  answer  to 
this  question.  What  is  the  connection  between 
the  inner  life  of  a  butterfly  and  a  caterpillar  ? 
In  the  awakened  consciousness  of  the  man  how 
little  there  remains  of  the  impressions  and  ex- 
periences of  the  child's  soul,  how  little  we  are 
conscious  of  what  we  were  as  children!  "Now 
that  I  am  become  a  man  I  have  put  away  child- 
ish things.''  Some  day  there  will  be  an  awak- 
ing as  from  a  confused  dream,  and  what  moted 
us  most  here  on  earth  in  our  hopes,  our  plans, 
our  wishes,  and  our  desires  will  lie  behind  us  in 
the  far  distance.  We  shall  take  over  with  us 
into  eternity  only  a  very  little — only  the  really 
great    and    true    and    profound    things  which 


ii6  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

touched  our  life  closely.  And  it  will  be  the 
same  thing  with  our  life  in  society.  Age,  race, 
family,  calling,  position,  nationality — all  these 
will  fall  away  from  us,  only  those  things  in 
our  personal  relationships  will  remain  which 
reach  down  to  the  very  roots,  there  where  souls 
come  into  contact  with  the  final  and  eternal 
things. 

There  will  be  a  great  casting  off  of  wrappings. 
Borrowed  finery,  vain  trifles  and  baubles  will 
vanish,  and  hidden  beauties,  truth,  and  reality 
will  come  to  light.  There  will  be  a  great  ex- 
change of  roles:  the  first  shall  be  last  and  the 
last  first.  "Oh,  Eternity,  thou  word  of  thun- 
der!'^ 

Beyond  all  personal  hope,  yet  bound  up  in 
it,  there  stretches  something  still  higher — a  vast 
and  mighty  prospect;  an  eternal,  infinite  king- 
dom of  personal  spirits,  which  consists  of  the 
past,  present,  and  future  generations,  in  which 
each  generation  has  its  position  and  its  place. 
And  we  who  are  still  in  the  process  of  develop- 
ment are  not  solitary  in  our  earthly  wanderings. 
We  are  already  citizens  of  a  higher  world,  and 
linked  with  it.  Already  we  are  conscious  of  un- 
seen greetings,  unheard  whispers  and  calls.  So 
we  pursue  our  life's  journey  between  the  stars 
above  and  the  graves  beneath.     "We  bid  you 


ETERNAL  HOPE  117 

to  hope."  And  over  all  echoes  through  the  ages 
the  majestic  saying  of  the  apostle — "that  God 
may  be  all  in  all." 


This  is  our  faith  in  God.  Finally  the  ques- 
tion may  be  asked,  How  do  we  come  to  such 
a  faith .?  But  that  is  a  question  that  cannot  be 
answered  theoretically;  it  can  only  be  experi- 
enced. But  one  thing,  however,  must  be  very 
clearly  expressed:  Belief  does  not  come  to  us 
from  mere  necessity,  it  does  not  arise  from  the 
anxieties  of  our  life.  If  that  were  so,  it  would 
be  nothing  more  than  a  desire  and  an  illusion. 
No;  we  experience  faith,  it  is  true,  as  an  answer 
to  our  anxious  questions  concerning  life;  not 
as  our  own  compulsory  answer,  however,  but  as 
a  higher  power,  which  forces  itself  upon  us,  as 
a  revelation  which  streams  in  upon  us.  We  re- 
gard it,  not  merely  as  an  answer  to  our  ques- 
tions and  a  release  from  the  troubles  of  our  life, 
but  also  as  something  which  lies  beyond  it  and 
leads  onward.  We  look  upon  faith  as  a  neces- 
sity which  raises  us  beyond  our  former  existence, 
as  a  harsh  compulsion  which  is  laid  upon  us; 
and  in  proportion  as  it  frees  us  from  the  misery 
of  our  existence  it  lays  heavy  burdens  upon  us, 
brings  conflicts  into  our  life.    To  believe  is  to 


ii8  FAITH  OF  A  MODERN  PROTESTANT 

experience   revelations  of  a   new  world,   of  a 
deeper  reality. 

Those  to  whom  there  has  been  vouchsafed  in 
an  especial  degree  the  gift  of  seeing  this  deeper 
truth,  of  expressing  it  in  words  and  impressing 
it  on  others,  we  call  the  leaders  of  religion,  the 
pious  in  a  special  sense,  prophets  and  founders 
of  religion.  But  the  mystery  of  the  origin  of 
faith  consists  in  this:  The  mighty  ones  of  the 
earth,  the  leaders  of  religious  life,  the  great  per- 
sonalities to  whom  God's  Word  was  compre- 
hensible, and  was  revealed  with  inward  cer- 
tainty, flash  the  Divine  light  from  person  to 
person.  And  among  all  these  teachers  favored 
by  God,  who  have  forced  open  the  heavens  for 
us  and  called  down  the  fire  of  faith,  stands  the 
figure  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  towering  high  above 
all  others,  as  all  eyes  can  see.  All  that  we  ex- 
perience in  our  faith  is  at  every  point  most 
closely  connected  with  His  personal  life,  and 
is  entirely  inseparable  from  Him.  And  thus 
there  is  certainly  an  answer  to  the  question 
which  has  been  asked;  and  although  it  is  true 
it  does  not  reach  back  to  the  mystery  of  the 
origin  of  faith,  it  points  in  that  direction.  We 
have  and  we  hold  our  faith  in  God  in  the  spir- 
itual communion  created  by  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 
Place  thyself  in  the  electric  current  of  this  life, 


ETERNAL  HOPE 


119 


transmitted  by  His  Spirit,  His  Holy  Spirit,  and 
open  thy  soul  to  its  influence.  The  Almighty 
God  will  so  work  that  contact  will  be  made  and 
the  current  will  flow  through  thy  soul  also. 


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